No Shadow in Any Nook or Corner (Kuma naki kage)
A Japanese woodblock-printed book from 1867 by Shibata Zeshin, a Kyoto-trained artist, pairing black silhouette profiles of named figures with poems and small coloured scenes from classical literature. Each page centres a large black silhouette head in profile, framed by calligraphy columns, a framed vignette, and a patterned strip of flowers or waves. A designer could take the bold flat black profile against pale paper, and the way small inset scenes sit within a text grid.














































