絵本柳荒美談
This is a Meiji-era Japanese picture book (ehon) published in 1894 by Kinkodō, with woodblock-style line illustrations and printed kana captions, apparently aimed at a general reading public. The pictures show samurai in patterned kimono and hakama, a man kneeling in an interior with a shelved room and a seated attendant, and a fighting scene in a wooded setting. A designer might take the dense textile patterning, the compact framing with calligraphic captions beside the figures, and the expressive gestures of the characters as a model for storytelling layouts.
