japanese ascii art as the eshell banner message
;;; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_JIS_art
(defface shift-jis-art
'((t :font "-Mona-Mona Gothic Wide-regular-normal-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-160-iso10646-1"))
"The face for Shift_JIS artwork, which requires an appropriate font,
e.g. Mona font.")
;;; you want non-breaking spaces to be invisible. for example:
;; (set-face-attribute 'nobreak-space nil :underline nil)
(setq eshell-banner-message
(with-temp-buffer
(insert-file "~/.emacs.d/ascii-art/alice")
(propertize (buffer-string) 'face 'shift-jis-art)))