Woodblock Print Book by Eitaku: Samurai Stories, E-hon Format

Indigo cover, pale label, and a binding thread doing its quiet work.

This woodblock print book, Samurai Stories, E-Hon Format, is from Japan and dated 1870. It is ink on paper, by Eitaku. E-hon, or picture books, were printed from carved woodblocks and stitched by hand in the Japanese fukuro-toji style, with folded pages bound along one edge. The cover is a deep, wrinkled indigo paper. A tall cream label at upper left carries the title in bold characters with smaller columns of text beside it. White stitching runs down the spine at right. It is 6.1 inches wide and 8.8 high.

The cover is all restraint. The stories, presumably, are not.