Inferno XV

Inferno XV draws on the fifteenth canto of Dante's poem, in which the pilgrim crosses a burning plain where the damned run beneath a slow rain of fire. Takeda's print belongs to a body of work in which he turned his cartoonist's eye toward European literary subjects, treating the figures of the Inferno with the same flattened silhouettes and graphic outlines that characterize his Genpei prints. As a mokuhanga, the image is built from carved blocks printed on washi, and the artist exploits the medium's capacity for crisp linework and saturated flat color rather than the atmospheric bokashi gradations of nineteenth-century ukiyo-e. The result reads closer to a printed broadside than to a traditional landscape sheet, consistent with Takeda's training in sculpture at Tama Art University and his practice as a satirical illustrator. The choice of canto XV, with its scholar-shades pursued by flame, suggests the same interest in moral catastrophe and historical reckoning that animates his battle subjects.