Large Japanese style back tattoo of a grey crane in flight with pink cherry blossoms and pale peonies, shown from behind.

Crane and cherry blossom back piece

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece shows a crane spreading its wings across the upper back, with a branch of pink cherry blossoms curving over the shoulder and down the side. Peony-like flowers and falling petals fill the lower back, and the background shading uses soft grey gradients. The black and grey shading on the bird and flowers contrasts with the pink blossoms, which are the only colour in the design.

Japanese Realism Back Crane Bird Cherry blossom Peony Flower Branch Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sixteen boats had gone out from Harrow Cove before the blossom came down the hill, and only eleven came back. Old Edda Brandt sat on the harbour wall every evening after that, mending the same grey net, and nobody had the heart to tell her that her son's boat was among the lost. Her grandson Pell brought her tea in a chipped mug and said nothing about the crane.

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The crane came first, the fishermen said, a grey bird standing in the shallows at slack water, too tall for any heron, its wings folded like a tired sail. It watched the harbour for three mornings. On the fourth, the cherry tree behind the chapel broke into flower overnight, and petals drifted onto the water faster than the tide could carry them out. Pell swore the crane lifted its head toward the blossom and then toward the open sea.

On the first calm day the crane spread its wings and rose over the breakwater, and the boats still in harbour followed the line of it past the rocks. Edda pulled the net into her lap and found the knots tied in a pattern she did not remember tying. Two days later the three missing boats limped in on the evening tide, low in the water, their holds full of silver herring, and her son stood at the bow of the first one with his cap in his hands.

Pell found a single petal caught in the bottom of his grandmother's mug, pink as a shell, and he kept it in his pocket for years. Every spring after, the tide brought petals into Harrow Cove, and no one cut the cherry tree back, though the chapel roof leaked from its roots.