Colour Japanese style tiger tattoo with clouds and waves covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Tiger and waves on an upper arm sleeve

Japanese · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large orange and black tiger snarls over clouds, rocks and stylised waves across the upper arm and shoulder. Bold black outlines and smooth grey shading define the fur and water, while green highlights on the rocks and faint bamboo leaves add colour at the top of the piece. The tiger dominates the composition, wrapping diagonally down the arm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mariam,

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The gate at Kessler Ford has a new painting on it since you left, and the customs men have stopped joking about it. Old Haruto, who runs the lamp room now that the bridge is quiet, painted a tiger across the upper rail in the spring, coming down out of a bank of cloud with its mouth open. He used the green from the bottle we found in the wet store, the one with no label. Nobody asked him to. He said the river wanted a guard that didn't need paperwork.

Last Tuesday a lorry driver from Gdansk was held for six hours over a crate of lacquered bowls with no invoice. He stood under the tiger and told the sergeant he had seen the painted stripes shift when the rocks below the gate went white with spray. The sergeant laughed, then went quiet, because the water had gone white at the rocks and there had been no wind.

I have started counting the crossings. Four hundred and twelve in March, and every one stamped without a single bribe. Haruto says it is the bamboo at the top of the picture that does it, the leaves catching a wind the tiger keeps behind its teeth. I think it is simpler. Men are careful in front of a thing that can see them.

Come home when the swallows are back. Bring the good scissors and the tin of green pigment, and tell your mother I am well.

Yours, Ilse

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