Realistic grey and red tattoo of a skull wearing a horned samurai helmet and mask, set against a red rising sun, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Samurai skull with rising sun on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a skull in a horned samurai helmet and a mask, with a skeletal armoured torso below. A large red rising sun with radiating rays sits behind the figure. The skull and armour are shaded in greys and blacks with smooth gradients, while the sun is solid red, and the piece fills the frame on the upper arm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tane had sewn lacquered plates for thirty winters, and when the widow of Lord Sagano brought him her husband's skull wrapped in silk, she asked for a helmet that would keep it company. He did not argue. He measured the bone with a cord knotted at every finger's width, then carried the cord home and hung it on the nail beside the door, where it swayed each time someone opened the shutter.

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He worked through the frost. The horns he forged from a broken ploughshare, bending them slowly over coals until they curled like the tips of a wave. The face-mask he painted the colour of old cream, leaving the cheeks bare so the weather could reach them. Every evening the widow sent a boy with rice and a question: had he decided on the sun? She wanted it behind the lord, red as a cut, because he had always said he would die facing it.

On the last morning of the thaw Tane set the helmet over the skull and carried them both out to the yard. The sun came up over the paddies and struck the lacquer, and the horns threw their shadows long across the mud. The boy who had been watching asked whether the lord could see now. Tane thought about it, then said the lord had always been able to see. He had only been waiting for someone to give him a proper face to look out of.

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