Genpei No. 14 - The Final Moments of Kiso Yoshinaka

Genpei No. 14 illustrates the death of Minamoto no Yoshinaka, the cousin of Yoritomo and Yoshitsune who briefly held Kyoto before being run down at the Battle of Awazu in 1184. Heike monogatari describes him dying in a frozen rice paddy, his horse trapped in mud as an arrow took him through the face, and Takeda compresses that account into a single graphic tableau of horse, rider, and pursuers. The print uses the heavy keyblock outlining and flat color fields characteristic of the Genpei series, with the snow or paddy water reduced to negative paper rather than printed pigment. There is no attempt at the elaborate armor patterning of Edo musha-e; instead the figures read as silhouetted emblems, more aligned with twentieth-century poster design than with nineteenth-century nishiki-e. Yoshinaka's fall is a recurring subject in Takeda's series because it marks the moment the Minamoto victory begins to consume itself, a thematic concern that runs through the cycle's later sheets.