What are KAKEJIKU?

What began as a way for traveling priests to easily transport buddhist mandalas, the hanging scroll painting, or kakejiku arrived in Japan in the sixth century.
In order to accommodate this new fad, Japanese architects created special alcoves to function as altars to hang these religious paintings and present food or flowers as offerings.
This space quite quickly became more secular in which paintings of flowers and reminders of the seasons were displayed and changed once or twice a month in celebration of and in coordination with the changing faces of nature.
Japanese architecture and interior design came to almost completely focus all attention on the alcove, or tokonoma so that the whole impression of the house changed completely with the hanging of a new scroll painting.