Three angles of a full sleeve tattoo of a samurai in a menpo mask and kabuto helmet beside a horse, in Japanese style on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Samurai and horse sleeve on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A samurai warrior in a kabuto helmet and menpo mask holds a fist near his face, with a horse's head and bridle beside him and a red banner behind. The linework is detailed and the greys are shaded smoothly, with wisps of smoke across the lower part. Red and yellow accents appear in the banner and helmet, and the design wraps around the arm in three views.

Japanese Realism Upper arm Shoulder Warrior Helmet Mask Horse Banner Smoke

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Harrow Dyke would say where the mask came from, only that the old pumpman carried it up the shaft in 1912 and never sent it back down. Dad kept it on a nail in the lamp room: iron cheeks, a grin cut for teeth, and a helmet above it with a crest like folded wings. Bannock, the pony I was minding that spring, would not walk past that nail without blowing through his nose at it.

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The strike started on a Monday. By Thursday the gates were chained and the men stood about the rows with their hands in their pockets, and the lodge sent word that the banner was to go up on the chapel wall. Someone had painted it in the back room of the Miners' Arms, red calico stretched over two brush handles. Mr Tapp, who ran the stables, said the coal board would sell every pony to a knacker by month's end. He said it looking straight at me, because I was fourteen and the stable was mine to sweep.

On the Friday I led Bannock out before light, past the winding house and across the yard to the chapel. I had the mask inside my coat, taken off its nail while Dad slept. When the lodge men turned and saw the pony coming with that iron face pressed against my ribs, nobody laughed. Tapp stopped with his hat in his hand.

Dad took the mask from me, turned it once in the grey light, and hung it on the chapel railing beside the banner. Tapp went back to his stables without a word. Bannock lowered his head to the frosted grass and began to graze, and the smoke from the ovens went on climbing over the red cloth as if it had somewhere else to be.