Takeda Hideo 武田 秀雄, The Final Illness of Taira Kiyomori (Taira Kiyomori no byōshi 平清盛病死), from the series Genpei 源平, 1985. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Mary Trumbull Adams Art Fund. © Takeda Hideo.
Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority
August 30, 2026 – January 3, 2027
Members Preview Day: Saturday, Aug 29, 10am-5pm (kindly RSVP)
Insider Members Reception: Saturday, Aug 29, 5:30-7:30pm (kindly RSVP)
Special 1-Hour Tours: Sept 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27, times vary
Allen Adler & Frances Beatty Adler Gallery
Princeton University Art Museum is thrilled to present Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority, an exhibition of 22 screenprints by the Japanese artist Takeda Hideo (b. 1948), on view from August 30, 2026, to January 3, 2027. The exhibition focuses on Takeda’s most celebrated series, Genpei, produced between 1985 and 1999, and offers a striking reinterpretation of The Tale of the Heike, the medieval epic recounting the twelfth-century Genpei War (1180–1185) between the rival Minamoto and Taira clans. The tale’s romanticized portrayal of warfare, loyalty, sacrifice, and masculine valor has exerted a profound influence on Japanese art, literature, performance, and film for centuries.
With an acerbic sense of humor and bold graphic style, Takeda has earned an international reputation for his exaggerated and often erotic aesthetics. These qualities are vividly apparent in Genpei, in which he radically reimagines the celebrated war narrative. Rather than illustrating The Tale of the Heike in a conventional manner, Takeda selects episodes that foreground cruelty, betrayal, cowardice, and arrogance, offering a more humorous and often cynical perspective on the epic. His nonliteral and non-comprehensive reinterpretation uses searing colors, bold lines, stylized patterning, and exaggerated, anachronistically tattooed figures to challenge conventional representations of the samurai and traditional ideals of heroic masculinity. The symbolic red and white associated with the rival clans further heighten the prints’ dramatic visual impact.
The exhibition brings together all twenty-two prints from the Genpei series in the United States for the first time, alongside selected works and contextual materials. Through humor, satire, and visual provocation, Takeda challenges romanticized portrayals of the Genpei War and questions outdated stereotypes, authority, and social values. The exhibition also situates Genpei within Takeda’s broader career as a satirical cartoonist and the cultural and political landscape of late twentieth-century Japan.
Curated by Kit Brooks, curator of Asian art at the Princeton University Art Museum, Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority is accompanied by a major new publication—the first substantial English-language book on the artist in several decades—featuring essays by Brooks and The Tale of the Heike specialist Elizabeth Oyler, as well as an interview with Takeda. The exhibition also features special events and programs, including a Members Preview Day and Insider Members Reception on August 29 and one-hour tours throughout September. Explore the exhibition and full program schedule to learn more!
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