The swimmer who owned the water. Zhang Shun — Rōrihakuchō Chōjun in Japan — was a fish-seller by trade, and no one alive was more at home beneath the surface. The legend has him able to stay submerged for seven days and nights, moving through the depths like open air, which made him the Liangshan brotherhood's undisputed master of aquatic warfare: he'd draw his enemies onto the water and finish the fight in the one place they could never follow. His nickname says it all — a pale streak flashing through dark waves, there and gone before the danger registered. On dry land plenty of men could match him; in the water, Zhang Shun was death itself.

Kuniyoshi catches him in his most famous moment, and it's a desperate one. Ordered to break through a fortified water gate under cover of night, Zhang Shun swims straight into a trap — the enemy has strung the channel with ropes and lain in wait, and as he surfaces they loose a storm of arrows down on him. Here he is at the heart of it: stripped to a red loincloth, his whole body a masterwork of tattooing, a blade clenched in his teeth as he hauls himself up through the black timbers of the gate, arrows raining past him and ropes snaking through the churning water. It's a picture of raw, cornered courage — one man, half-drowned and outnumbered, still climbing. Little wonder it became one of the most sought-after backpieces in the tattoo world; the scene is practically built for the curve of a spine.

This comes from Kuniyoshi's celebrated 1827 Suikoden series — the run of prints that lit a tattoo craze across Edo, as young men saw these gloriously inked outlaws and wanted the same defiant beauty on their own skin. Zhang Shun took his place among the hundred and eight heroes as the man you simply could not beat once the fighting reached the water — and as the image countless people have since chosen to carry for life.

This is Zhang Shun (張順), the "White Jumping in the Waves" (浪裡白跳); known in Japan as Rōrihakuchō Chōjun (浪裡白跳 張順), 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)