  We performed a far-IR imaging survey of the circumstellar dust shells of 144
evolved stars as a mission programme of the AKARI infrared astronomical
satellite using the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) instrument. With this survey,
we deliver far-IR surface brightness distributions of roughly 10' x 40' or 10'
x 20' areas of the sky around the target evolved stars in the four FIS bands at
65, 90, 140, and 160 microns. Our objectives are to characterize the far-IR
surface brightness distributions of the cold dust component in the
circumstellar dust shells, from which we derive the amount of cold dust grains
as low as 20 K and empirically establish the history of the early mass loss
history. In this first installment of the series, we introduce the project and
its aims, describe the observations, data reduction, and surface brightness
correction process, and present the entire data set along with the results of
integrated photometry measurements (i.e., the central source and circumstellar
dust shell altogether). We find that (1) far-IR emission is detected from all
but one object at the spatial resolution about 30" - 50" in the corresponding
bands, (2) roughly 60 - 70 % of the target sources show some extension, (3)
previously unresolved nearby objects in the far-IR are now resolved around 28
target sources, (4) the results of photometry measurements are reasonable with
respect to the entries in the AKARI/FIS Bright Source Catalogue, despite the
fact that the targets are assumed to be point-sources when catalogue flux
densities were computed, and (5) an IR two-color diagram would place the target
sources in a roughly linear distribution that may correlate with the age of the
circumstellar dust shell and can potentially be used to identify which targets
are more extended than others.
