Colour Japanese-style tattoo of a brown spotted lion dog with green swirling clouds, wrapped across the outer thigh.

Japanese lion dog on the thigh

Japanese · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A brown, white-spotted lion dog, similar to a foo dog or shishi, stands across the outer thigh with one paw raised and claws visible. Its mane and a large swirling cloud motif are shaded in green with fine parallel linework, and the eyes and open mouth are picked out in red. Bold black outlines define the forms against the skin, and the design fills most of the frame.

Japanese Thigh Cloud Swirl Paw Claw

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The shishi came down from the pass the spring the river froze late, and it did not hurry. Hanae the potter's daughter saw it first from the terraces, a brown beast spotted like a fawn's back, its green mane lifting in wind that did not reach the valley floor. It stopped at the lower gate and lifted one forepaw, the way a dog does when it wants to be let into a house it already knows.

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Her grandmother said the lion dogs guarded doors and that a guardian who had come down was either hungry or sent. Hanae brought it a bowl of rice and a fish from the stream. The shishi ate the fish with its eyes half closed and left the rice for the sparrows. Then it turned and pointed its muzzle up the mountain, toward the cloud that sat on the ridge like a folded fleece, and it waited for her to understand.

So they climbed. The path was steep and the shishi went ahead, its claws gripping the stone where Hanae's sandals slid. At the top there was a shrine with no roof and a stone pair of lions gone soft with moss, their mouths open in the same snarl as the living one beside her. The shishi sat down between them. Its open jaw held no threat, only the patience of something that had kept a door for a very long time.

Hanae understood then that the village had never been unguarded. It had only been waiting for someone to climb up and say that the gate was still standing. She walked down alone. When she looked back from the bend, the green cloud had settled over the shrine, and the mountain had gone quiet and sure of itself.