Colour Japanese style tattoo of an orange koi fish with a pink lotus, pink cherry blossoms and blue waves across the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Orange koi with lotus and cherry blossom on a back

Japanese · Back · Colour · Photo

An orange koi fish swims diagonally across the upper back, with its scales shaded in red and orange and its fins outlined in dark ink. A large pink lotus flower sits behind it, with pink cherry blossoms and turquoise wave shapes filling the gaps around the fish. Bold outlines and soft shading give the piece a classic Japanese look against the skin.

Japanese Back Koi Fish Lotus Cherry blossom Flower Wave Water

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The goldfish were never meant to win, Uncle Ray said, so when the Harcourt boy looped the fat orange one on his third throw, he got it in a clear plastic bag and a look of pure disbelief. I was fourteen and minding the stall while the generator coughed behind the dodgems. I watched that bag swing away down the dusty lane, past the candyfloss van and the carousel with its one lame horse, and felt the odd pang of someone walking off with a piece of my own pocket.

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That night I found Ray on the back step of the lorry, peeling a satsuma with his thumbnail. He didn't ask what was wrong. He just said there was a farm pond behind the hedge at Wenham's Lane, and the lotus would be opening on the water about now. Fish like a bit of shade, he said, and the boy's mum would be glad of the peace. We walked the field with a torch, the grass wet to our ankles, the air full of blossom that had blown off the hedgerow and settled in drifts like confetti.

The Harcourts' kitchen light was still on. I didn't go to the door. I went round the side, where a washing-up bowl sat on the wall with the bag tied over it, and I unknotted the plastic and let the water move. The fish turned once, slow, its scales catching the torch like hammered copper, and it swam straight into the shadow of a pink lotus that had its petals open wide as hands.

Ray stood at the gate and didn't say a word. When I came back he handed me the satsuma, already halved, and we ate it on the step while the rides went dark one by one. The bowl was empty. Somewhere in the pond, a fish that had never once been out of water was learning the way home.