Black ink Japanese-style tiger design climbing downward with a curled tail, beside the kanji 虎, printed on orange textured paper.

Tiger with kanji on orange paper

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink tiger climbs head-first down the page with its tail curling high above it, and the kanji 虎 for tiger sits at the upper left. The bold striped linework, shaded fur and clawed paws follow a Japanese woodblock print style. The black ink is printed on a bright orange paper with fine vertical ridges, and the design is shown without any body placement.

Japanese Traditional Tiger Kanji Tail Claw Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The print had hung above our stove for so long that the orange paper had faded to the colour of weak tea, except where the ridges caught the lamplight. Gran would not let anyone take it down, not even when the damp came through the north wall and the tiger's tail began to lift off the plaster as if it wanted to leave. She said it had come ashore in a crate of tinned peaches the winter before the war, wrapped around the tins like a bandage, and that she had flattened it under the mattress until the peaches were gone.

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The night my father's boat was overdue, the wind got under the shutters and rattled the kettle on the hob. Gran sat in her chair with her hands folded and watched the tiger instead of the door. 'It goes head first,' she said, 'like something coming down a stair it doesn't trust.' I asked her what the marks in the corner meant. She said the word was tiger, and that nobody on Hollin had ever seen one, not even on the mainland, only foxes and the odd ginger cat that swam across from Skerra for fish scraps.

I took the print down to read the marks properly and found the tail curling up past the edge of the paper, the last bar of stripes running off the sheet where the printer must have run out of room. It made the animal look less like it was falling and more like it was climbing back up toward something it had lost. I held it to the window and the tide was already turning in the channel.

At first light the boat came in low and slow, with one man at the tiller and my father bailing with a saucepan. I pinned the print back above the stove that afternoon, but turned to face the door, so whoever came in off the water would have to look at it first.