Colour Japanese style sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder, showing a gold snake with an open mouth among blue peonies, pink flowers and grey clouds.

Japanese snake and peony sleeve on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A full sleeve tattoo covers the upper arm and reaches onto the shoulder, centred on a gold snake with its mouth open and fangs bared, coiling through the design. Blue and pink peonies, green leaves, a small pink blossom and scattered petals sit among dark grey cloud shapes, with shaded and smooth colour fills. The bright orange, blue and pink inks stand out against the black clothing and dark background, and the design is cropped below the elbow and at the neck.

Japanese Upper arm Shoulder Snake Peony Flower Cloud Cherry blossom Petal Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother Oseki's garden sat on the hill above Hirano, where the peonies grew so heavy their heads bowed to the wet stones. Every spring the gold snake came down out of the cloud that hung over the wall, and every spring her daughter Tomi sat on the step and waited for its mouth to open. Her mother said a snake that yawns is only tired, but one that opens its jaws wide is about to speak.

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It came down in the third year of drought, its scales the colour of barley in low sun, and it did not yawn. "The river has gone under the stones," it said. "The cloud is thin and I am cold in it. Bring me one petal from the blue peony and I will carry rain across the valley." Tomi knew the blue peony was the one her mother would not let anyone pick, because it had grown from the ash of the old well-keeper's bowl. She went to it anyway, in the grey before dawn, and her hands shook as she snapped a single stem.

The snake took the petal in its teeth, gently, the way a cat carries a bird it does not mean to hurt. It rose into the cloud, which went dark and then silver, and for three days rain fell on the peonies, the barley and the well. On the fourth morning Tomi found the path lined with pink petals, and a new blue bloom had opened where the old stem had been, with one gold scale caught at its heart.

Her mother said nothing about the stem. She only set the kettle on and asked whether Tomi had heard the gutters talking in the night. "It asks after you," Tomi said. Her mother smiled into her cup, and the gutters ran all summer.