Two tattooed people in a Japanese style: a woman with a grey oni mask on her stomach and a man with a full colour sleeve and an oni mask on his chest.

Two people with Japanese style tattoo sleeves and torsos

Japanese · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A close crop shows a woman in a black crop top and a man without a shirt, both covered in tattoos on their arms, torsos and necks. The man's chest and right arm carry colour Japanese style work including an oni mask, skulls, cherry blossoms and a wave, with shaded black and grey linework. The woman has a grey oni mask with pink blossoms on her stomach, a skull on her chest and a bird on her arm, with the faces cropped out of frame.

Japanese Chest Upper arm Forearm Neck Ribs Other Skull Cherry blossom Wave Bird Dragon Star Script Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oni had been carved from cherrywood the winter the river froze solid, and by spring nobody in Hatsuno could remember who had commissioned it. Mio, the mask-maker's daughter, found it wrapped in oiled cloth at the back of the workshop, its horns still raw where the chisel had stopped. It was grinning. Her father said that was the trouble with oni. They always grinned, because they had already seen how the story ended.

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She carried it down to the bridge anyway, because the rice paddies had cracked like old pottery and the well was down to mud. Under the willows the grey water slapped against the pilings, and the fishermen's wives sang to keep the carp from their nets. Mio held the mask up to the moon and asked it plainly what it wanted in return. The mask said nothing. Its lacquer began to bloom with pink petals, one after another, until the blossoms ran down its cheeks like spilt paint and the smell of cherry filled the reeds.

Then the river rose, not in flood but in something like courtesy, lifting the planks one by one until the whole village stood on dry ground watching the water come to them. Nobody drowned. The wave folded itself back into the hills and went home.

Rain fell for three days. On the fourth morning Mio hung the mask above the workshop door, where the petals had dried to a dull rose, and she told every child who asked that the oni had been paid in full. It still grins at anyone who comes asking for rain, and it has never once looked surprised.