Full Japanese-style sleeve tattoo on a man's arm, showing a figure in a teal robe with a sword beside cherry blossoms, waves and red roses on the upper arm and forearm.

Japanese sleeve with figure, waves and roses

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A full sleeve covers the upper arm and forearm of a man wearing a grey vest, with a figure in a teal robe holding a sword at the shoulder. Black and grey wave and cloud shading surrounds cherry blossom petals, while red roses and green leaves run down the forearm. Bold outlines and layered shading give the piece a traditional Japanese look, with colour dominant on the figure and flowers.

Japanese Upper arm Forearm Figure Sword Cherry blossom Wave Cloud Rose Leaves Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The kimono comes in brown paper two days before the wedding, and you spread it across the spare-room floor at midnight because you cannot wait for morning. Your aunt Mariko has written on the tissue in careful capitals: THE COLOUR OF SHALLOW WATER. It is teal, faded where the silk has been folded for decades, and along the hem a crane in silver thread has lost two of its feathers. You kneel beside it with a torch and count them twice, as if the number might change.

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At the fitting, Mr Okafor pins the sleeves while the bus outside sighs at the stop. He tells you the robe was made for a tea-house dancer who never married, and that the lining has a pattern of waves nobody sees unless the wind lifts the hem. Your fiancé's mother has already decided the crane is unlucky. You tell her the crane has waited a long time for a reason to leave the cupboard. She laughs, then stops, because you mean it.

At the reception the hall is loud with speeches, and you slip out to the car park where the cherry tree is dropping its last petals onto wet tarmac. You fold the outer robe over the bonnet of a borrowed car, careful with the sleeves. Later you find one pink petal caught in the crane's silver wing, and you decide to leave it there, the way the waves in the lining keep their place under all that colour.