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How does one know whether to read left to right or right to left? Or is it clear from the text?
It's usually clear from context. That sign in particular says "Martial Arts Hall" ("budokan" / 武道館) from right to left. Imagine an alternate universe where English could also be read left-to-right or right-to-left. If you were to see a sign saying "Hall Arts Martial", you'd immediately know the right way to read it.
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Mangas often mix and match, depenfong on what best fits the image.
If it's not done a lot on the web, I blame CSS. With horizontal text you scroll the page from top to bottom, with vertical text from right to left. Most HTML/CSS seems to be optimized for the former. E.g. vertical percentage margins don't work like horizontal ones, and CSS3 columns have similar issues.
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Interesting. It's a woodblock print, so I think it would have been created backwards from the final product?
The description of the Japanese woodblock printing process in https://education.asianart.org/resources/the-ukiyo-e-woodblo... says that the artist's initial drawing is pasted face down on the woodblock, which is then carved to match it. So (unless I've got myself confused) the final print will be the same way round as the artist's drawing. This also means that text in the image (like the title and the artist's signat…