Black and grey Japanese full sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder, with cherry blossoms, waves, chrysanthemums and a sun motif.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Japanese sleeve with cherry blossoms and waves

Japanese · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Three photographs show the same full sleeve tattoo from front, side and back angles, covering the upper arm and shoulder. Cherry blossoms, flowing wave bands, chrysanthemum rosettes, a sun disc and patterned fills such as scales and lattice are outlined in fine black linework and packed with solid black and grey shading. The ink is entirely black and grey on a plain light background, with the torso partly visible in each frame.

Japanese Geometric Upper arm Shoulder Cherry blossom Wave Chrysanthemum Sun Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Hollin Rose was still out past the Carrick buoy when the rest of the fleet came in on the ebb, and Nell Dawes stood on the quay with her hands jammed in her oilskin pockets, counting hulls the way other people said prayers. Eleven. Twelve. The sea had gone the grey of wet slate and was rising in long, lacquered ridges that broke white along the breakwater, each one lined up behind the last like the scales on a fish.

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Her uncle Teddy had drawn that pattern on the back of every mooring chit in the harbour office for forty years. He had also painted the wave bands on the Rose's wheelhouse, and the blossom at her bow, and a rayed sun on the foredeck that the harbourmaster called heathen and the old women called lucky. Nobody had told him the sea didn't read designs. He used to say the sea read everything, only slower.

At half past four the lamp came up at last, a smudge at the edge of the light, and then a gull-bitten hull crept through the harbour mouth with her sails furled and two men bailing as though their lives depended on it. Nell didn't wave. She ran the length of the quay instead, and when the first line landed at her feet she saw it was knotted the old way, a sheet bend Teddy had taught her at seven, wet and perfect.

Later, in the net loft, she unfolded the chit he had left in the drawer before the stroke took him. On it, in pencil, was a single cherry blossom with five notched petals, and beneath it, in his cramped hand: Bring them back on the turn. She folded it into her pocket and went down to help haul the catch.