Colour Japanese style tattoo of a multi-tiered bathhouse with a red arched bridge and pine tree on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Japanese bathhouse on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo of a traditional multi-roofed Japanese bathhouse with a kanji sign on its facade, set above a red arched bridge and a pale stone path. A pine tree stands to the right, with grey clouds shaded behind the rooftops. The linework is bold and the building is rendered with warm orange, yellow and red tones, with black and grey used for the roof and clouds.

Japanese Upper arm Bridge Pine tree Kanji Cloud Building

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in the valley could agree on when the river had started carrying tea-coloured water, only that by the third week of rain the stepping stones had gone under and the red bridge was the only way up to the upper baths. Aiko was sent across with the boiler key and a lantern, because the old keeper's knees would no longer take the slope, and she was told to be back before the bell at the shrine rang six.

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The guest that evening came up the bridge with wet sleeves and no umbrella. He did not give a name. He paid in three smooth river pebbles, which Aiko thought was a joke until she tried to spend them in the village shop and found them still warm. He bathed for a long time, and when he came out the steam had gathered under the eaves in a grey cloud that would not thin, so that from the road the whole house looked as though it were sitting in weather of its own making. Before he left he pressed a pine seedling into her palm and asked her to plant it where the bridge met the bank.

She did, mostly to be rid of it. The seedling was stunted and the river took a yard of bank that winter. But the pine kept putting out new needles, and by the time Aiko's hair had gone white it stood taller than the bathhouse roof, leaning out over the water as if it had been asked to keep watch on the bridge. Her grandchildren still carry the pebbles to the shop, and they still come back warm.