Colour Japanese style full sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and forearm, showing a blue koi fish, pink cherry blossoms and a red chrysanthemum among grey clouds.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Koi and blossom full sleeve on an arm

Japanese · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A full sleeve tattoo runs from the shoulder towards the wrist, with a large blue koi fish as the central subject. Pink cherry blossoms, a red chrysanthemum and grey swirling clouds or waves fill the surrounding space. The shading is smooth and the bold colours stand out against the grey background, with the composition following the curve of the arm.

Japanese Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Koi Fish Cherry blossom Chrysanthemum Flower Cloud Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pond has been drained twice since the frost, and still the big blue koi keeps turning up under the lily pads, as if she has been waiting for you to finish the job. You named her Mrs Okada the summer your father stopped coming down the garden path with the watering can. Nobody else would have bothered. The chrysanthemums along the north wall had gone to seed, and the cherry tree dropped its petals onto the water in pink rafts that she nosed apart like boats.

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On the morning you finally lifted the pump, the water came away brown and cold, and there she was in the silt at the bottom, not dead at all, flexing her great fan of a tail against the stones. You knelt on the wet flags with your sleeves shoved up and tried to get your hands under her. She was heavier than she looked and slippery as a wet glove, and for a long minute neither of you moved. Then she simply went, a slap of blue through the gap in the wall and into the drain run that feeds the allotments.

You followed her with a bucket and a torch, half expecting to find nothing. Instead you found the old brook the council built over in 1958, rushing black under a rusted grating, and at the far end a stepped cascade where the drain met the river. She was hanging in the spray at the foot of it, fighting upward through the falling water one hard beat at a time. You watched her reach the lip and vanish over it. When you walked home the lilies were already closing their pads over the empty pool, and you left the gate open behind you.