Black linework tattoo of a figure with a hair bun holding a sunburst parasol and a flowing sash, in a Japanese-inspired style, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Parasol-holding figure on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black tattoo shows a figure with a hair bun holding a round parasol with radiating lines and a sun motif, with a long flowing sash trailing down beside the body. The lines are bold and solid with minimal shading, and the design is shown in black ink only against lightly tanned skin. The tattoo sits on the outer upper arm and fills most of the frame, with a pink floral fabric visible at the right edge.

Japanese Upper arm Geisha Sun Hair bun Kimono

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you with the wet boots, and mind the brazier. This is the one about Mireille the parasol-bearer, who walked the high road from the salt towns with her hair bound up so tight it hurt, and a lacquered umbrella that the sun itself had been rude enough to copy. Every morning she unfurled it on the hill above the ferry, and every morning the sun came down through its ribs and wrote itself across her shoulder in long pale stripes.

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Now the ferryman's son, Tobiah, who could not stop looking at her sash, asked why she carried the thing at all when the sun was so plainly on her side. She told him that a sun with nothing to shade is only a bully. Her sash, she said, was the river, and it had to run somewhere, so it ran down her skirt and into the dust, where the goats came to drink it. Tobiah did not understand, and said so, and she laughed and let him hold the handle for a whole furlong.

The ferry sank that autumn in a squall, with the salt merchants aboard and not one of them a swimmer. Mireille walked down to the landing with her parasol closed and stood there until the water went flat. When she opened it again, the light came through the ribs in neat black bars, and the children on the shore swore the sun had lost its temper and gone hiding behind her.

So if you are walking the high road and a woman with a folded sun comes by, give her the good side of the path. She will not ask for it. She will only shut the umbrella and wait for you to go on ahead.