Hongan Leaves Kyoto

A sheet from the Saru series treating the Heike clan's flight from the capital in 1183, when the Taira abandoned Kyoto carrying the child Emperor Antoku and the imperial regalia ahead of Kiso Yoshinaka's advancing army. The title references the departure of the imperial line — hongan, the original sovereign — from the city that had been the Taira's seat of power. Takeda compresses the procession into a graphic frieze of monkey-figures, the simian conceit giving the gravity of dynastic collapse a satirical undertone consistent with the Bungei-Shunju Cartoon Award–winning sensibility he had established by 1976. The mokuhanga is printed on [washi](/glossary/washi) in the traditional manner, but the design draws on the flat planar logic of silkscreen and illustration rather than on Edo [musha-e](/glossary/musha-e) conventions. Across the Saru series, Takeda treats the Heike Monogatari less as heroic chronicle than as a recurring human comedy, and the Kyoto departure is one of the cycle's pivotal turning points.