Coloured Japanese-style flash design of a roaring tiger among bamboo and swirling clouds, with a small frog holding a leaf in the lower right corner.

Tiger and bamboo flash with frog in rain

Japanese · Mixed · Flash

A roaring tiger with an open mouth and bared teeth dominates the design, set among green bamboo stalks and leaves, grey swirling clouds and a black spiral motif. A small frog holding a leaf with a snake drawn on it sits in falling rain at the lower right. The bold black outlines, orange and yellow tiger stripes and flat grey shading give a clear, traditional composition on a white background.

Japanese Traditional Tiger Cloud Frog Leaf Snake Rain Spiral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been falling on the valley for nine days when Dai Pritchard came up our lane with a tin of cocoa and a tale he swore was true. "Frog's the only sensible creature round here," he said, shaking water from his cap onto our step. "Sits under a leaf and lets the sky do what it likes."

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He told it the way his uncle had told it, in the back room of the Welfare with a pint going flat beside him. There was a tiger who lived high up the mountain, above the bamboo, and he roared at the cloud until the cloud swelled and split and dropped its weight on the village. The tiger wanted the rain to stop because he could not hunt in it. Down in the wet grass a small frog had found a leaf as broad as a tin tray and drawn a snake across it with a splinter of coal, so that anything passing would think twice. The tiger came down through the bamboo with his teeth bared, saw the snake on the leaf, and stopped dead.

"Did the frog get eaten?" I asked. Dai laughed so hard he coughed cocoa down his jumper. "Not that one. Frogs don't get eaten when they've got a snake on their roof." He rapped the table twice. Through the rain the shift whistle sounded faint and far off, and after a while my father's boots came clattering up the lane, slower than usual.

When the door opened he stood dripping on the mat with his lamp gone out. I had a stub of coal in my fist, and on the back of his shift card I had drawn a snake, and over it a leaf as broad as my hand. He looked at it for a long time before he put it in his pocket.