The tattooed outlaw who wore his destiny on his skin. Shi Jin was born into a wealthy family, trained in martial arts as a gentleman's pursuit, but everything changed when he got those tattoos - nine dragons coiling across his body, marking him as something other than respectable. In a society where only criminals and outcasts marked their skin, those dragons made him unemployable, unmarriageable, outcast. So he became what everyone assumed he was - masterless, dangerous, and eventually the first hero recruited into the Liangshan brotherhood.

Kuniyoshi captures him in fierce combat, locked in a struggle with Chen Da, the "Tiger Who Leaps Over Streams." Both warriors are explosions of color and pattern - elaborate armor, flowing robes, Shi Jin's tattooed arms visible as he grips his staff. They're matched in strength and fury, neither giving ground, a moment of pure contest between two skilled fighters testing each other. Shi Jin's expression is focused and intense, his wild hair adding to the sense of barely controlled violence.

This is from Kuniyoshi's legendary 1827 Suikoden series, the prints that sparked a tattoo craze across Edo. Young men saw Shi Jin's nine dragons and wanted that same defiant beauty marked on their own skin, that same visible proof they'd chosen the outlaw path.

This is Shi Jin (史進), the "Nine Tattooed Dragons" (九紋龍); known in Japan as Kyūmonryū Shishin (九紋龍史進), from the series Tsūzoku suikoden gōketsu hiyakuhachinin no hitori (通俗水滸伝豪傑百八人之一個, One of the 108 famous Suikoden heroes) 1827.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳, 1798-1861)