The Mountains of Husband and Wife (Onyo imoseyama 阥阦妹背山)
A Japanese woodblock-printed book from 1810 by Hokusai (1760-1849), issued in Edo for a general readership, presenting a dramatic puppet-theatre-style tale. The first picture shows a samurai figure in a palace interior with a kneeling attendant, a dense cluttered scene of crowded figures and domestic objects appears in the second, a ghostly or supernatural encounter in a room is in the third, and a fourth shows an armoured warrior seated in profile beside an upright sword. Designers can take from the pages the strong contrast of dense hatched line work against open white space, and the framing of figures within architectural screens and interiors.
