Japanese style forearm tattoo showing a koi fish, a pink lotus, Tokyo Tower and Mount Fuji beneath a red rising sun with blue waves.

Koi, lotus and Tokyo Tower on a forearm

Japanese · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm tattoo combining a red rising sun with rays, a black city skyline with Tokyo Tower, and Mount Fuji in the background. In the foreground, an outlined koi fish swims beside a large pink lotus flower, with cherry blossom petals and blue wave patterns filling the lower arm. The linework is bold and dark with soft shading in the sky and lotus, and the colour is strong in the red sun, pink flower and blue water.

Japanese Forearm City skyline Koi Lotus Cherry blossom Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Kenji,

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The koi in the pond behind Ueno shrine have grown so fat since you left that Mrs Aoki says they have eaten the fishmonger's profits. I fed them the crusts from Mother's bento box this morning, the way you used to, and the big orange one with the chipped fin came right up to the edge and looked at me as if I owed him an explanation.

Mr Tanaka has finally agreed to paint the tower on the shop shutter. He wanted Fuji on it too, but I told him the mountain is too shy to show itself from our street unless the air is clean, and the air has been grey all month. So he has painted the sun instead, a red disc with white rays spreading out like a child's drawing. Everyone says it looks like the flag. I say it looks like the morning you climbed onto the train to Hull with one suitcase and a sketchbook full of waves.

On Thursday the lotus your grandfather planted finally opened, pink and enormous, the size of a teacup and twice as stubborn. I sat on the wooden bridge with the cherry petals drifting onto my sleeves and tried to draw it on the back of an electricity bill, the way you taught me, but my lines came out soft and wrong. Write back and tell me what the sea looks like there. Tell me whether it is as blue as the water you used to draw curling round the koi in my schoolbooks.

The big orange one is still waiting at the edge of the pond every morning. I have promised him you will be home before he grows any bigger.