Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Takeda Hideo's Genpei: Defying Authority

Takeda Hideo's Genpei: Defying Authority

Brooks, Kit

Hardcover

Art HistoryIndividual ArtistsJapanese Art

Publisher Price: $49.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date October 13, 2026

ISBN10: 0691973997
ISBN13: 9780691973999
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Oct 13 2026
Pages: 136
Language: English

A stunning exploration of a landmark series of prints by one of Japan's most inventive contemporary artists

Takeda Hideo has worked across media throughout his long career, from painting and print design to cartooning, photography, and sculpture. Endlessly flexible, frequently surprising, and often surreal, his work injects dark humor into a wide range of subjects, with a touch of irreverence and incorporating sexual elements, distortion, and dynamic composition. This book examines the body of work for which Takeda is best known, Genpei, a series of silkscreens portraying battle scenes from the twelfth-century Genpei War.

Kit Brooks looks at the ways in which the series challenges the romanticization of war and long-standing attitudes about Japan's classical past. Previous scholarship has often characterized Genpei as a successor to a long tradition of representing The Tale of the Heike, a Japanese literary classic that narrativizes the Genpei War and romanticizes the conflict. Takeda's selection of episodes overwhelmingly highlights acts of betrayal, cowardice, and cruelty on the part of the samurai heroes. Brooks argues that the series is part of a wider twentieth-century turn that challenged the perpetuation of outdated and hypocritical values of the samurai in Japanese society, thus positioning Takeda as a forerunner to well-known international artists like the global phenomenon Murakami Takashi, who have similarly reworked historical Japanese aesthetics with a flat, comic-like visuality as a means to address contemporary social issues.

The first major book in English on the artist in several decades, Takeda Hideo's Genpei features an interview with the artist in both English and Japanese.

Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum

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