Two photographs of a full body Japanese-style tattoo: on the left a back piece seen while kneeling in water, on the right a torso and sleeves with an eagle, cherry blossom and koi.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Full body Japanese-style tattoo in two views

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

The left photograph shows a person kneeling in shallow water, seen from behind, with a large back piece including a figure, swirling clouds and dark outlines. The right photograph shows the torso and both arms covered in bold linework and shading, featuring an eagle, pink cherry blossoms, waves and a koi. The tattoos use strong colour against black backgrounds, and the figures are cropped so that no faces are shown.

Traditional Back Chest Upper arm Forearm Eagle Cherry blossom Koi Wave Cloud Back piece Sleeve Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Sobetsu believed the old koi could climb the falls, least of all Haru, who had been sweeping the bathhouse steps since she was tall enough to hold a broom. Her grandfather said the fish had come down from the high pool with the spring melt, and that it would go back up once the cherry trees above the gorge dropped their petals on the water. Haru thought this was the sort of thing grandfathers said to keep children away from the river.

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The petals came early that year, the week after the typhoon tore the roof off the drying shed. Haru found the koi in the shallows below the weir, its orange flank scraped raw, its fins splayed against the current like the wings of a bird that had forgotten how to fly. She knelt on the stones and cupped it in both hands. It was heavier than she expected, and cold, and it did not struggle.

She carried it up the gorge path in a bucket of its own water, past the shrine where a carved eagle watched over the gate with painted eyes, past the waterfall that roared like a crowd at a festival. At the top the wind came off the cloud bank in long grey ropes. Haru tipped the bucket into the pool beneath the rocks and stepped back, not sure what she was waiting for.

The fish turned once, slowly, and then the current took it. Haru watched it rise through the foam, a single bright shape against the wet black stone, while blossoms settled around her shoulders like a thin snow. She walked home with petals in her hair and did not tell her grandfather that she had cried, or that he had been right about the river.