Coloured Japanese-style design of a samurai warrior in armour holding a drawn sword, surrounded by yellow lightning bolts, clouds and black waves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Samurai warrior with lightning and waves

Japanese · Mixed · Flash

The drawing shows a samurai warrior in green and blue armour, raising a curved sword in one hand and holding a red-shafted spear in the other. Yellow lightning bolts cross the figure, and the background is framed by black and grey clouds, swirling waves and stylised rock forms. Bold black outlines and white highlights define the armour and water, with the colour applied in flat, layered washes.

Japanese Warrior Sword Spear Armour Helmet Lightning Cloud Wave Rock

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

In the village of Hanabara the rain had not stopped for nine days when the miller's daughter, Sayo, agreed to marry the boatman's son. The wedding was set for the first dry morning, and nobody in the village believed there would be one.

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On the day, the sky split open above the headland and a warrior came down the cliff path in green lacquered armour, a curved sword on his shoulder and a red-shafted spear in his fist. Lightning ran off his helmet and into the puddles. He said he had come to witness the vows, since the gods had been asked and none had troubled to come. The headman poured him sake. He drank it standing, and the waves below the cliff rose higher than the moored boats.

The groom's mother asked what he wanted for his trouble. He said he wanted the storm to pass over the bay and not over the rice fields, and in return he would keep watch over the couple's first winter. She agreed without knowing what she had bargained with. He raised the sword, the clouds peeled back like wet paper, and the rain fell only on the sea.

Every spring after, the boatman's son mended nets beside a stone shaped like a crouching man, and the lightning came down the headland to check the lines. Sayo kept a red thread tied to the bow of their boat. When the catch was poor she tied another knot in it and said, he is still on the cliff.