Japanese full sleeve tattoo with a samurai mask, koi, lotus flowers, a green dragon and waves, shown on an upper arm next to its flash design.

Samurai, koi and dragon Japanese full sleeve

Japanese · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The image pairs a full-colour flash design of a Japanese sleeve on the left with a photograph of the tattoo on an arm on the right. The design includes a samurai mask at the top, a koi fish, pink and blue lotus flowers, a green dragon, a swirling cloud and stylised waves. The linework is bold and outlined, with shaded colour in pink, blue, green and cream against a grey background.

Japanese Upper arm Forearm Mask Koi Lotus Dragon Wave Cloud Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You finish the mask on the last night of the thaw, when the stream at the forest edge is loud enough to drown out the carpenters. Its brow is pressed into a scowl, its moustache curls like spray off a weir, and you have painted the lacquer the red of a fresh cut. Old Tomé from the mill comes up the lane with a lantern and asks whether it will frighten the children. You tell him it was meant to.

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Tomé's granddaughter, Ines, has been carrying a koi in a bucket up the forest path every morning since the autumn flood, because the pond behind the shrine dried to a puddle. She wants it to reach the falls above the pines, where her grandmother said the river climbs high enough to become a dragon. You laughed at that. You had carved the koi's scales from cherry wood, one by one, and she paid you in plums.

The night the mask leaves your bench, the bucket is empty on the step. The tracks in the mud lead not to the falls but into the trees, and beside them, pressed into the wet bank, lie scales the size of your thumbnail, glossed gold, and a single lotus petal, pale pink and still cold from the water. You follow them as far as the first pine, where the lantern light gives out, and you stand there holding the mask against your chest, listening to the water go on climbing without you.