Full back tattoo of a hannya mask among pink cherry blossoms in Japanese style, with further tattoos visible on the upper arms.

Hannya mask and cherry blossom back piece

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece shows a hannya demon mask with a grey-toned face, yellow eyes and a bared mouth, framed by pink cherry blossom branches and a swirling wind motif. The linework is bold and the shading is smooth, with the blossoms and eyes adding colour against the mostly grey background. The photograph is taken from behind, with the tattoo filling most of the frame and sleeve work visible on both arms.

Japanese Botanical Back Upper arm Mask Cherry blossom Petal Wind Back piece

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mask comes aboard at Peterhead wrapped in a page of the Press and Journal, and the skipper tells you only that it belonged to his late wife's cousin and that the wind has gone round to the north-east. You unwrap it under the deck lamp. The wood is so light it seems hollow, lacquered the colour of weak tea across the cheeks, with two gold eyes that catch the lamp like a cat's in a hedge. Someone has threaded a length of faded pink silk through the eyelet, and when you lift it the silk lifts too, as if it has been waiting to be asked.

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For four days the nets come up grey and empty. Dougie, the mate, won't sleep under the bunk where the mask hangs. He says the carver was a woman who waited too long for a man to come home, and that her anger set into the wood and never dried. You tell him he's soft, and then on the fifth morning you find the galley floor scattered with petals that weren't there at midnight, pale pink and damp, as though someone had shaken out a blossom tree over the stove. Nobody admits to bringing them. The skipper just puts the kettle on and says nothing.

The gale comes in from the Buchan ground at dusk, and the Margaret Ruth lies over until the rails are under. You tie the mask to the wheelhouse rail with the silk, face out to the weather, because it seems the only thing on board that has ever looked at a sea without flinching. By morning the swell has gone down. A single petal sits on the sill of the wheelhouse window, fresh as paint, and when you pick it up it is wet with spray and not with anything else.