I heard that in The Great Wave off Kanagawa the boats are intended to look more agenty than the wave, but for Western people it will typically look like the other way round (due to Western languages being written from left to right), and for a Westerner to get the right effect they'd have to look at the picture in a mirror. (It works for me, at least.)

Huh, I just tried that, and it works for me too. When you mirror it, it looks like they're going into the wave instead of fleeing from it. The effect is really strong; I wondered if it would still work when I knew about it, but it does.