Japanese-style flash of an orange lion dog among gold clouds and grey waves, with a pink peony and a small butterfly, intended for a back or sleeve tattoo.

Lion dog and peony flash design

Japanese · Mixed · Flash

A full colour drawing of an orange lion dog, or shishi, with gold swirled clouds around its head and body, set against grey rocks and black and grey waves. A large pink peony with green leaves fills the upper area, and a small pink and blue butterfly and a black calligraphic stroke sit to the lower right on white. The bold black outlines, white highlights and layered cloud and wave shapes are typical of traditional Japanese tattoo flash.

Japanese Peony Flower Butterfly Cloud Wave Rock Calligraphy Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide had already taken the left ear of the shishi when Oyo reached the harbour wall, and her grandfather stood in the shallows up to his knees, calling her name as though his voice could hold the stone up.

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"Leave it," he said when she came down the steps. "It has guarded this bay for ninety years. It can rest a while." But the head had rolled into a gully between black rocks, and she could see the gold of its painted curls under the foam, the orange mane spread out like weed. She tied the rope around her waist, the way he had taught her for abalone, and went under.

The water was green and loud. She found the head wedged against a ledge, its open jaws full of kelp, and a surge slammed her into the stone so hard her shoulder rang. Above her the cliff was grey and streaked with white, shaped like the waves on the temple's lacquer screen. She pulled the head free, the rope jerked, and she kicked toward the light with the carved lion held against her chest like a sleeping child.

On the wall her grandfather had already sat down. He took the stone from her without a word and turned it so the sea showed in its eyes. Then he drew a single curved stroke in the wet dust of the wall, a line that hooked back on itself, the mark for return. "Tomorrow we put it back where the peonies can see it," he said. Behind them, pink petals from the temple garden lifted off the water and drifted toward the rocks.