Green pencil sketch of a geisha with cherry blossom branches, a large moon, hair pins and a kimono patterned with clouds, with waves at the sides, as a Japanese style flash design.

Geisha with cherry blossom and waves sketch

Japanese · Colour · Flash

A line drawing of a geisha with her eyes lowered, wearing an elaborate updo with hair pins and a kimono decorated with swirling cloud motifs. Cherry blossom branches arc over her head in front of a large circle representing a moon, and stylised waves and clouds fill the background. The sketch is drawn in green pencil on white paper, with light construction lines and no shading.

Japanese Botanical Geisha Cherry blossom Kimono Moon Wave Cloud Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hairpins were finished the week the blossom came early, so Aiko wrapped the three sticks of carved cherry wood in oiled paper and carried them down to the wharf before the fishermen were awake. Mitsu's boat was still tied up, but its lamp was out and its ropes were coiled wrong. Nobody had told her he had gone out on the ebb while the moon still hung over the rooftops.

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She sat on a bollard and unwrapped the first pin. Each one carried a branch of blossom, five petals cut so thin that the lamplight came through them, with a bead of jet at the tip that swung when she turned her head. Mitsu had ordered them in spring, when he still meant to be home for the summer festival at the shrine. He had said the moon would sit full above the water and the waves would run white against the breakwater, and she should wear the blossom so he would know her in the crowd.

The sun came up behind the stone wall. Fishwives began shouting over their baskets, and a boy with a barrow asked whether the pins were for sale. She told him no. Then she remembered the lacquer box Mitsu had left on her windowsill, its waves painted in the same stiff curling rows as the sea, and she understood that he had never planned to watch her wear them from the shore.

She pinned the first branch into her hair, facing the water, and then the second and the third. She walked home with the moon still pale above the roofs, a little ahead of the day, and left the boat to the gulls.