Black and grey realism tattoo of a geisha playing a shamisen, with a red flower in colour at the edge, on a person's side above the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geisha playing a shamisen on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A geisha in a kimono sits and plays a shamisen, with her hair in a high bun and her face in profile. The figure is rendered in soft black and grey shading with fine detail in the fabric folds, set against a shaded background panel. A cluster of red flowers with green leaves sits along the right edge in colour.

Realism Japanese Ribs Geisha Kimono Hair bun Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pour the rice wine first, because the rest of this is thirsty work, and stop pretending the bride's mother isn't listening at the screen. My grandmother knew a shamisen player called Oto, who was hired for a wedding in the hill town of Hanamura in the year the peonies came out early and the late frost took half of them.

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The merchant's daughter was to be married into a family of salt traders down the valley, and the bridegroom's people wanted bright, modern airs played on the new instruments from the coast. Oto said nothing. She sat behind a paper screen with her back straight, tuned the three strings until they hummed like wet rope, and waited. When the bride's grandmother asked for the old song about the boatman's wife, the room went quiet, because that song had been forbidden in that house for thirty years.

Oto played it slowly. Halfway through, the groom's father set down his cup, because the melody was the lullaby his first wife had sung to a child who did not survive the winter. Somebody knocked over a vase, and red petals went skidding across the tatami like spilled sparks. Nobody picked them up. Oto was offered a purse of silver for her trouble and refused it, taking instead a single crushed bloom from the floor and tucking it into her sash.

That is why there are peonies painted on the teahouse wall in Hanamura, though none of you will ever be let inside to see them. The salt traders still send a boat each spring. Now pass the cup along, and mind the bride's mother, she has started to listen properly.