絵本太閤記
This is a Japanese woodblock-style picture book (ehon) compiled by Maki Kinnosuke and published by Kinjudō in 1887, retelling the life of the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi for a popular readership. The pictures are bold black-line panoramas of crowded battle scenes, with men in armour charging, falling and fleeing across wooden floors or through shallow water, plus framed portraits and text columns set beside the images. A designer might take the dynamic diagonal crowding of figures, the dense hatching of dark armour, and the vertical kanji text panels as strong compositional models.
