Evisen

Evisen Skateboards is from Tokyo, and it’s probably the brand that made the rest of the world pay attention to Japanese skateboarding. Katsumi Minami (南 勝巳) started it in 2011 and still runs it as director, and what sets it apart is obvious at a glance: graphics pulled straight out of traditional Japanese imagery — dragons, bonsai, origami cranes, fireworks, sushi — crossed with a fairly warped sense of humour. The logo is ゑ, an obsolete hiragana character nobody writes any more.

History

Minami set Evisen up to support his own scene. The brand is based in Tokyo but keeps tight communities in Osaka and Sendai, and it looked outward from the start: distribution runs through Theories of Atlantis in the US and KEEN in the UK, among others. The international breakthrough came in 2017 with Evisen Video, the first full-length, filmed and edited by the same people skating in it. It premiered on a world tour: New York in December 2017, with Josh Stewart and Jenkem behind it, while Free ran the trailer, the parts and the date of the London premiere. Jenkem gave the New York premiere a full photo recap.

Team videos have kept coming since, including Overland (2024), edited by Minami himself, along with collaborations that explain the brand pretty well: a board series with photographer Daido Moriyama (2019), a capsule with adidas Skateboarding (2019), trucks with Independent (2021), a collection with Australia’s Pass~Port called Hot~Pot (2023), and a 2018 Jenkem collab that included a vibrator-shaped cruiser.

The team

The core is Japanese. Shintaro Maruyama (MARU) and Shinpei Ueno — who also runs TIGHTBOOTH — are the names the brand itself puts forward, and Minami skates in the videos too. Around them are Koichiro Uehara (on since 2016), Seimi Miyahara, Kento Yoshioka and Kotora Mitani, who turned pro in June 2024. It isn’t a Japan-only roster either: American Shor West, Britain’s Laurence Keefe — from Reading, long since transplanted to Tokyo — and, since November 2025, Australian Dante Narita-Johnson.

The boards

Standard popsicles with a mellow concave, in the usual 7.8”, 8.125” and 8.38” widths, wheelbase 14” to 14.25”. Every so often they run their own much wider, shorter cruiser shapes, plus touches almost nobody bothers with, like UV-reactive ink that changes colour in sunlight. The graphics are the real draw: short runs, heavily illustrated, and they sell out.

Who it’s for

It’s a small brand doing short runs, so it isn’t always easy to find in Europe and it isn’t cheap. If you want the most deck for the least money, this isn’t it. If you want a board nobody else at your park is riding, in a completely normal size, with a graphic worth hanging on the wall once you’ve snapped it, it is. Line it up against the rest in the deck catalog, and check the sizing guide if you’re torn between 8.125” and 8.38”.