Full back Japanese style tattoo of samurai warriors, flames, clouds and birds, with blue waves across the lower back.

Japanese back piece with samurai and flames

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

A full back tattoo shows armoured samurai figures in red and blue, with a bird or phoenix-like creature and a large flame. Waves and clouds fill the lower and upper areas, and the figures appear to be fighting in the water. Colour is bold and saturated, with bright blues, oranges and greens set against grey and black shading, and the composition fills the whole back.

Japanese Back Warrior Flame Phoenix Bird Wave Cloud Armour Water

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fishermen of Ushiura had a saying that the sea kept its own accounts, and that every debt paid in salt came due in fire. Tomoe Kiro had heard it since childhood and never believed it until the spring the bay turned the colour of pewter and the gulls stopped crying.

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The creature came down out of the cloud bank on the third morning, a bird as wide as a fishing boat, its feathers the green of old copper. Behind it rode a samurai in lacquered armour, red cords laced across his chest, sitting so still on the scudding wave that Kiro thought at first he was a carved figure lashed to a prow. Then he lifted his sword and the water rose to meet him.

Kiro's grandfather had taught him to row against a current by counting strokes and never looking at the shore. He counted now. Each time the bird wheeled, the air ahead of it burst into flame, and the sea beneath hissed and gave up its fish in silver heaps. At the tenth stroke the samurai's blade came down and the wave folded over the boat like a sleeve.

When Kiro surfaced, the bird was gone and the warrior was kneeling on the water, his helmet tipped back, watching the last of the flames sink into the foam. He turned his head and met Kiro's eyes. "You kept rowing," he said. "Most men stop." Then he bowed, and the sea lay flat and blue as a bolt of cloth.