Full body Japanese style tattoo with dragons, chrysanthemums and clouds across the chest, arms and thighs of a man in white briefs.

Full body Japanese irezumi with dragons and chrysanthemums

Japanese · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A standing man in white briefs shows a large Japanese style tattoo covering his chest, abdomen, both arms and thighs, with his head cropped out of frame. The design includes dragons, chrysanthemums, clouds, lanterns and flames set against heavy black and grey shading and wave-like backgrounds. Bold colour fills the flowers, dragon scales and lanterns, while the dark background and shaded areas give the composition a strong, symmetrical look.

Japanese Chest Upper arm Forearm Ribs Thigh Dragon Chrysanthemum Flower Cloud Lantern Flame Man

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lanterns are supposed to go out before the tide turns, and tonight you are the one who has to count them. Forty-one hang from the chain above the fish market, paper bellies lit from within, each one painted with a chrysanthemum that the old dyer on Kanzaki Quay swore was the last true red in the harbour. You climb the ladder with a pole and a bucket of seawater, and the wind off the bay pushes against your back like someone who wants you to hurry.

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Below, the fishermen's wives stand in a line along the wall, their sleeves knotted up. Nobody speaks. Every year someone's boat does not come back, and every year the town sends a lantern out over the black water to show the way home. Your grandfather used to say the sea is a painted screen, that the waves on it are only drawn to look like waves, and that a dragon sleeps beneath the clouds of foam and wakes whenever a man is foolish enough to row past at dusk.

The last lantern hangs highest, and when you reach for its cord the flame inside leans sideways, then steadies. Out past the breakwater a single light answers, low and orange, crawling towards the quay like a slow fish. You hold the pole still. The line of women stops breathing, and you know without looking that it is Tomi's boat, the one with the dragon carved into its prow, coming home on a tide nobody thought could bring it.

You pinch the flame out with wet fingers, then light it again, so the lantern glows for the boat and not for the dark. The wives begin to weep and laugh at once. When Tomi steps onto the stones, soaked to the ribs and grinning, he swears he saw the dragon turn its head and breathe a little fire across the water. You tell him that is the only way he would ever have found his way back. Then you go down the ladder and do not tell him you saw it too.