These Handcrafted ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ Folding Screens Reimagine a 17th-Century Japanese Masterwork
The “Eva Japonism” project’s second installment maps EVA units onto Tawaraya Sōtatsu’s wind and thunder gods in wood, cloth, and Japanese paper.
Summary
Tokyo-based ukiyo-e studio Hanzo has released five Evangelion folding screens that reinterpret Tawaraya Sōtatsu's National Treasure “Fūjin Raijin-zu Byōbu” through EVA units and their pilots
Each screen is built from washi, wood, MDF, and cloth, and functions both as a standalone display piece and as part of a modular, multi-panel composition
The collection is the second chapter of Hanzo's ongoing "Eva Japonism" series, which reframes the franchise through traditional Japanese art forms
Hanzo’s “Eva Japonism” project has returned with its second installment, a set of five folding screens titled “EVANGELION Fūjin Raijin-zu Byōbu” that reconstruct one of Japan‘s most revered paintings through the visual language of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The source material is Tawaraya Sōtatsu’s “Fūjin Raijin-zu Byōbu,” a 17th-century pair of folding screens designated as a National Treasure, depicting the wind god (Fūjin) and thunder god (Raijin) against gold leaf. Hanzo and artist Eshi Izumo have used that composition as a structural template, replacing the two deities with five EVA units while retaining Sōtatsu’s spatial logic, brushwork cadence, and sense of suspended, atmospheric tension. The result is not a collage or overlay but a full reconstruction: each EVA unit has been rendered by sampling Sōtatsu’s line quality and compositional instincts so that the machines appear as if the original painter had conceived them.
The collection splits into one thunder god screen and four wind god screens. Unit-01, cast as the thunder god, carries the duality of awe and salvation that defines both the deity and the machine. Shinji Ikari drifts through the composition with closed eyes, suspended between agency and surrender. The four wind god screens pair Unit-00 with Rei Ayanami, Unit-02 with Asuka Langley Shikinami, Unit-08 with Mari Illustrious Makinami, and Mark.06 with Kaworu Nagisa. Each pilot is painted in expressive, brushstroke-driven rendering rather than anime-accurate reproduction. Rei reaches toward something she cannot yet hold. Asuka charges forward, embodying will over hesitation. Mari throws her full body into motion with an openness that reads as defiance. Kaworu stands with arms open and a quiet smile, observing rather than intervening.
The character portrayals function as more than decoration. Arranged side by side in a nikyoku-isseki (two-panel, one-fold) format, the screens are designed so that the pilots’ gazes, hand positions, and spatial distances begin to interact, producing visual dialogues and implied relationships that only emerge when the panels are placed together. Hanzo also notes that figures or objects placed in front of the screens can extend the display into three dimensions, turning the byōbu into a backdrop for a personalized diorama-style arrangement.
Materially, all five screens share an identical build: washi (Japanese paper) mounted on a frame of wood, MDF, and cloth. Unfolded, each measures 31.4cm tall by 43.7cm wide by 1.0cm deep; folded, they compress to 22.0cm wide and 2.0cm deep. The scale is deliberately intimate, closer to a desktop display object than a room-dividing traditional byōbu.
Evangelion has always drawn heavily on religious and mythological iconography, from Judeo-Christian symbolism to Shinto and Buddhist imagery embedded in its visual design and narrative architecture. The “Eva Japonism” project takes that existing mythological layer and routes it through a specific, centuries-old Japanese art tradition, treating the franchise’s built-in symbolism as raw material for formal reinterpretation rather than as surface-level reference. The result is a set of objects that feel native to both lineages.
All five EVANGELION screens are available now via Hanzo’s Ukiyo-e Kōbō online shop.
