Growing up in Tasmania, J-Pop musician Emi Emi frequently travelled to Japan to visit her grandparents. She never used to fully understand the importance of learning Japanese, which led her to reject parts of her cultural identity—which she later felt ashamed of.

“I spent a lot of … time in between Launceston and Japan growing up. I was living in Tasmania, and all of my schoolmates and everyone outside of the home spoke English, so I didn't really understand why I needed to speak Japanese.”

This is a universal experience, particularly in Australia, where this concept of whitewashing teaches us to reject where we came from. Emi hears a similar feeling from her peers who have immigrant parents, where many can't fully engage with their family's language. For Emi, that distance left a strain on her relationship with her Japanese heritage.

“I would go back to Japan and still not be able to hold a full conversation with my grandparents and realised, ‘oh, actually this really sucks and it's really embarrassing.’”

Making music in Japanese helped her reconnect with her language in an enriching and positive way. She sang in Japanese for the first time for a project for MONA, and that experience shaped the music she went on to make.

“I realised I could learn Japanese in a space that felt fun and creative, and there weren't many consequences for making mistakes. So that was why I picked it up and ran with it.”

She then started the project Emi Emi, which led her to release her debut EP “エミエミ”. Mixing City J-pop, classic pop, and neo-kawaii influences, it’s meant to be a bright, colourful and playful celebration of the Japanese language.

She wanted it to be fun and silly first and foremost, a project interested in giving things a go and not caring if you fail.

“I don't think people really understand how hard it is to write a good song with silly lyrics, because you write something and it sounds so lame, and you really have to get out of that self-judgment and just be at the point of this is to be silly and fun. A lot of the songs on this EP were an exercise in being like, okay, so this is the level of Japanese that I do have. It's all very conversational. I was trying really hard not to overthink the lyricism.”

In this way, her aesthetic allows her to express different parts of herself, and she hopes that through the EP, listeners get to do the same. At its core, she wants to motivate people to go and learn more, and that it’s never too late to pick up a language and give it a go. 

Asian Australian pop deserves more attention in a music landscape so often dominated by indie rock. Australia’s multicultural communities have countless stories to tell, and our music scene should make more room for the artists like Emi Emi who are doing just that. 

You can listen to エミエミ here.