Black and grey Japanese style sleeve tattoo on a forearm, showing a foo dog, an oni mask, a skull, a pagoda and swirling clouds.

Japanese sleeve with lion, oni and pagoda

Japanese · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three side-by-side photographs show a full forearm sleeve with a foo dog head, an oni mask and a skull set among swirling clouds, leaves and flowers. The linework is fine and the shading is smooth and detailed, with strong contrast between the darkest blacks and soft greys. The image is entirely black and grey against a dark background, and the wrist and hand are visible at the bottom of the middle panel.

Japanese Realism Forearm Lion Skull Cloud Wave Flower Leaves

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stone lion was gone from its plinth on the third night of the thaw, and the innkeeper's boy swore the drifts were printed with paw marks climbing towards the saddle. I did not believe him until I stood at the gate myself, lantern guttering, salt sacks roped to my back, and saw the closed-mouthed shishi still sitting alone, looking uphill like something left behind.

Keep reading

I had carried salt over the Hirogane pass for eleven winters and knew what the old folk said about the pagoda at the top. Its bell had cracked before my grandfather was born, and the cloud that rolled off the peak at dusk carried a voice that called travellers by their dead mothers' names. Nobody climbed past the last waymarker after dark. I went anyway, because the lion had been warm under my palm the year before, when I brushed frost from its brow for luck, and I wanted to know why it had left.

I found it beneath the eaves, flanks heaving, its curled mane furred white. Between its forepaws lay a lacquered oni mask, horns chipped, grin still fierce. Beyond the rail the valley rolled below like grey waves, and somewhere in the rocks a laugh rose and fell. The lion looked at me, then at the mask, and I understood that it had not come to steal from the mountain. It had come to bring something back.

I lifted the mask in both hands. It weighed no more than a bowl. I hung it on a nail above the gate next morning, beside the empty plinth, and when the cloud rose that evening it did not call my name. A week later the lion was back on its stone with its mouth shut and its eyes on the peak, and the oni stayed on its nail, grinning at the road.