Final Day of Kiso Yoshinaka

This Saru sheet depicts the death of Minamoto no Yoshinaka — Kiso Yoshinaka — at the Battle of Awazu in early 1184, killed by forces sent against him by his cousin Yoritomo after he had briefly held Kyoto. The traditional account emphasizes his refusal to abandon his foster brother Imai no Kanehira and his death by an arrow as his horse foundered in a frozen rice paddy. Takeda renders the scene with the simian protagonists characteristic of the series, the cartoon vocabulary stripping the episode of [musha-e](/glossary/musha-e) heroism and turning it into a compact graphic anecdote. The mokuhanga uses the customary water-based pigments and [washi](/glossary/washi), but the design relies on flat color and confident outline rather than on layered [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation. Takeda's wider career — moving fluidly between cartooning, printmaking, illustration, and comedy — feeds the tonal hybrid here: a serious historical incident recast through the visual logic of editorial cartoon.