1. The White Front Door
Both the corporate site and the LP had white hero sections. Minimalism completed with text alone. Not bad, but somehow too abstract to speak of "a thousand years."
"Preserve Existence for a Thousand Years" — this message sat on a white screen. The font was beautiful, the whitespace generous. But there was nothing to convey the scale of a thousand years. Text delivers meaning, but not the felt sense of it.
If the first thing a visitor sees at the front door is a white wall and text, the information is correct — but the impression falls short.
2. One Photograph
This photograph has a story behind it.
Soul Carrier is a project dedicated to returning the ancestral remains of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii to their hometowns in Japan. World War II severed family bonds across the Pacific, and the average age of first- and second-generation Japanese Americans now exceeds 85. Every year, more pass away without their remains reaching home. The third generation is the last to carry the family's memory.
During our disaster relief volunteer work on Maui, our five-year-old daughter suddenly fell ill with a fever. Lost in an unfamiliar land, we rushed to a church in Kapalua for help. There we met Martin — a man of Japanese immigrant heritage. He reached out his hand and said, "Japanese Bond," and arranged a three-night condominium stay funded by a historic church — the only one to survive the 2023 wildfire — even standing witness to the expense agreement on our behalf. It was December 22, 2025. On December 24, he delivered Christmas presents — groceries, a teddy bear, and educational toys for our daughter. With my wife and daughter safe, our daughter made a smooth recovery. It was Martin who then made the request: to bring the remains of his late mother, Teruko, back to Japan for burial. Born in Gunma Prefecture in the 1930s, Teruko had come to America as a "war bride" after the war and passed away at around 90. Martin had lost the phone number of his family in Japan and had completely lost contact across the Pacific.
We couldn't stay at the condominium forever. We headed to Hana Farm on the eastern tip of Maui. The host, Melanie, welcomed our family with the words: "To turn away a family during Christmas would go against the spirit of Christ." In Hana, I laser-engraved Martin's family crest onto a coaster to share with him, and spent time envisioning what a memorial keepsake could be. The form of the keepsake was still undefined. There was no TokiQR, no LP, no corporate site. All that existed was a single resolve — to stand alongside Martin's feelings and answer his wish. Melanie has extended a standing invitation to use Hana Farm at any time. This original experience is what led to positioning Hana Farm as one of the physical-layer distributed storage locations.
In January 2026, in near-freezing temperatures, I drove alone in a Honda StepWGN, sleeping in the vehicle while conducting family registry searches, a survey of 5,000 gravesites across temples and public cemeteries, and on-site investigation in Gunma. With no end in sight, after more than four days I found a breakthrough through dialogue with multiple municipal offices. Martin's words reached me: "Thank you Takuya. You are a gentleman and a scholar." The phrase dates back to 16th-century English — a tribute to someone of both learning and character. In an era when education was reserved for the wellborn and clergy, a gentleman who was also a scholar was a rare thing. The expression endures as one of the highest compliments, carrying both respect and warmth. Then, for the first time in my life, I visited Ise Shrine. Seeking a gift that would represent Japan for Martin. What began as an effort to reclaim Martin's story became a wish that everyone's story be preserved. This photograph was taken during that pilgrimage.
How many of the government-sponsored Japanese immigrants who crossed the Pacific to Hawaii must have also passed through this very torii gate. In the long arc of history, each person becomes a story — that conviction quietly grew within me as I stood on the approach.
The torii gate of Ise Shrine. Rebuilt every twenty years through the Shikinen Sengu ceremony, yet unbroken for over 1,300 years. There is no better backdrop for the message "Preserve Existence for a Thousand Years."
Backlight streams through the torii. Morning light filters through the wooden pillars, casting long shadows along the approach. This photograph carries the atmosphere of a place where time has passed through. Renewed with each rebuilding, yet standing in the same place in the same form. That is the very philosophy of TokiStorage — enduring through renewal.
TokiStorage also contributes to the Ise Shrine Shikinen Sengu Fund. This torii gate is not mere decoration — it is where the company's philosophy and practice connect.
3. 245KB — Designing the Optimization
The original image was 1.1MB at 2392x1782 pixels. Far too heavy for a hero background.
The hero background is the first image every user loads. It directly impacts LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), so file size is non-negotiable.
| Step | Size |
|---|---|
| Original (2392x1782) | 1.1MB |
| Resized (1920px width) | ~700KB |
cjpeg -quality 75 |
245KB |
Quality 75 is the threshold where degradation is hard to detect with the naked eye. Since the hero background is viewed through a dark overlay, compression artifacts become even less noticeable. From 1.1MB to 245KB — a 78% reduction. Displays within one second even on mobile connections.
Portrait Image for Mobile
Displaying the landscape photo (1920x1430) with cover on a smartphone's portrait screen shows only 34% of the torii's width — an overly zoomed view. We prepared a separate portrait-oriented shot (1668x2244), resized to 1080px width and optimized to 88KB with cjpeg -quality 75. A CSS media query swaps the image at 768px screen width or below.
Desktop gets the landscape photo (245KB); mobile gets the portrait photo (88KB). Each screen orientation receives the optimal composition. The full torii gate and its light beams are visible on both.
4. Implementing the Parallax
The most straightforward parallax implementation is background-attachment: fixed. However, this property does not work on macOS Safari or iOS. A technique that fails on iOS — which accounts for the majority of mobile users — cannot be adopted.
Instead, we used an HTML element with position: fixed to cover the entire screen.
<div class="hero-bg">— background image placed full-screen withposition: fixed<div class="hero-overlay">— dark overlayrgba(15, 23, 42, 0.55)to ensure text readability- Sections after the hero receive
position: relative; z-index: 1; background
We use real DOM elements — not ::before pseudo-elements — for ease of debugging and maintenance. Elements can be directly selected in DevTools, and style overrides are straightforward.
Technically simple, but the experience this structure produces is more than a scroll effect. The torii gate in the background stays fixed while content flows over it. The future layers upon the past — this is that sensation made visual.
"You become a story, generations connect in dialogue, the path forward" — this is TokiStorage's mission statement itself. The parallax is a practice of this mission. The fixed background is a record of the past; the scrolling content represents future generations. The moment the two overlap, the user experiences it firsthand — through the act of scrolling.
On mobile, we fall back to scroll-following behavior, prioritizing performance.
5. One Background for Two Sites
The corporate site (front door) and the LP (library) share the same torii photograph. Whichever entrance a visitor arrives through, the same view greets them.
Following the principle of self-containment, the image is copied into each repository. Rather than having the corporate side reference /lp/asset/, we place the same image in the corporate asset/ directory. Cross-repository dependencies are eliminated.
Placing the same photo in two locations may appear redundant. But this redundancy guarantees independence. Changes to one repository do not affect the other. And for visitors, it functions as a unifying thread — an implicit signal that sites of different depths belong to one brand.
6. Conclusion
You can convey information by laying out text on a white page. But if you want to speak of "a thousand years," it is faster to show a place that embodies a thousand years.
The torii gate of Ise Shrine has stood in the same place for 1,300 years. Rebuilt every twenty years, always new, yet always the same. It is a living example of the message "Preserve Existence for a Thousand Years" — and a metaphor for the architecture TokiStorage aspires to.
Text tells. A photograph lets you experience.
Parallax lets you feel the layers of time.
A single 245KB photograph transformed a white front door into an entrance spanning a thousand years.