Illustrated “Anthology of Tang-Dynasty Poems” in Five-Syllable Lines (Tōshisen ehon gogon ritsu hairitsu)
An 1833 Edo woodblock picture book by Katsushika Hokusai, published by Kobayashi Shinbei, pairing his line illustrations with Chinese five-syllable Tang poems in Japanese-annotated columns for a general reading public. The pages show a mix of landscapes, travellers on horseback, and figures at work in mountain settings, drawn in fine black ink lines on cream paper, with the printed calligraphic text facing each image. A designer could take from them the economy of ink-line landscape, the use of empty space and mist, and the way text and image share a page.
