Genpei No.-13

Another entry in Takeda's Genpei cycle, drawing from the twelfth-century war whose episodes are preserved in the Heike Monogatari — duels at the Uji bridge, the naval engagement at Dan-no-ura, the death of the child emperor Antoku, the fall of Taira strongholds. Takeda's mokuhanga treatment compresses this dense narrative material into emblematic compositions, where a single figure, weapon, or architectural fragment is isolated against open ground. The use of woodblock printing — historically the medium of Edo-period warrior prints — situates the series in conversation with that lineage while its visual reduction reflects Takeda's training as a sculptor and his cartoonist's instinct for distilled silhouette. The numbered, sequential format echoes the structure of an emaki handscroll or a chapter-divided war tale, with each print functioning as a discrete moment within a larger narrative arc rather than a freestanding image.