Japanese style upper arm tattoo of a shaded grey Buddha face with a pagoda, waves and a pink lotus flower.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Buddha face and lotus sleeve on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large Buddha face with closed eyes sits at the centre of the design, framed by a pagoda at the top and swirling waves and smoke-like lines around it. Fine shading in greys gives the face and pagoda depth, while the lotus at the bottom and the small blossoms along the edge are in pink and purple. The design wraps around the upper arm and shoulder, and the photograph is taken from the front against a plain light background.

Japanese Realism Upper arm Shoulder Buddha Wave Lotus Cherry blossom Smoke Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, and mind the smoke, it always goes the way of the wind and the wind is never honest. You want the story of the stone face above the lower gate? Every child in this valley knows it, though they put the pagoda on the wrong side of the river. I will tell it right, as my own teacher told me, and he had it from a man who was there.

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Long ago a stonemason named Ayame came up the pass with a cart and a sick mule, asked to carve a teacher's face for the gate. He had carved many saints, but each one came out frowning or dreaming. He spent a whole winter by the river watching the water fold over the rocks, and the old abbot grew impatient. "You are waiting for the river to give you a face," the abbot said. "The river has no face. Carve what you can see once you stop wanting to see anything."

So in spring Ayame stopped wanting. He closed his own eyes at the bench and worked by touch for an hour at a time, and his chisel began to know the shape of stillness. When he opened his eyes at last, the face was finished, lids lowered, lips pressed to a quiet that belonged to no single man. Incense from the braziers curled round the carved cheeks like river weed, and the monks swore the stone breathed. A novice touched the cheek and wept, though nobody knew why, least of all the novice.

Ayame never claimed the face as his. He left before dawn with his mule and a bowl of rice, and the abbot found a single pink petal from the cherry tree by the pond pressed under the bowl. Some say it was a joke. I think he knew the lotus would keep opening long after he was gone, and that a stone with its eyes shut is the only thing in the world that can look at you without asking anything back. The fire is low now. Take the lantern, and tell the children the pagoda goes on the left.