Black and grey Japanese style tattoo of an oni mask with lotus flowers, waves and chrysanthemums covering the shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Oni mask and lotus flowers on a shoulder and arm

Japanese · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large sleeve style tattoo shows a snarling oni demon mask on the upper shoulder, with a mythical creature, lotus blossoms and swirling wave or cloud forms below. Shading is soft and smooth, with bold black outlines and grey wash used for depth. The design is entirely black and grey and fills the frame, with a chrysanthemum flower at the lower right edge.

Japanese Shoulder Upper arm Lotus Chrysanthemum Wave Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate tiles had cracked along their old lines, and moss had worked into the mortar, so every spring I climbed to the north bailey with a bucket of lime and a trowel that had been my grandfather's. Nobody else would go near the oni. Its stone face sat above the gatehouse arch, jaw wrenched open, horns snapped short at the tips, and the village children swore its eyes followed you down the hill.

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Rain came in sideways the spring the roof fell in on the keep. Beneath the rubble I found the lotus carvings, half buried in ash-coloured silt, a whole pond of them cut into the stone of the water stair. Someone had carved waves beneath the blossoms, stacked and curling like a cloud that refused to move. My grandfather used to say the lotus grows out of mud and still comes up clean, and I had thought him soft until I watched those petals lift out of the grime.

Near the foot of the stair lay a shishi, a lion-dog with a pearl in its mouth, tipped on its side as if it had lain down to rest and never got up. I cleaned the pearl first. It was the only thing in that castle anybody had bothered to keep whole, and I wanted to know why.

The answer was in the oni's mouth. When I finally scraped the lime from behind its teeth, a square of paper was wedged there, dry as bark, with a chrysanthemum pressed flat inside the fold. The note was short and in my grandfather's cramped hand: the demon guards the gate, but the flower opens the door. I stood on the wet stair and laughed until the rain ran down inside my collar.