How an Australian musician is connecting to her heritage through J-pop

That's how Launceston-born and rising Japanese pop star Emi Doi describes her music.

Known under the pseudonym Emi Emi, the J-pop project has not only put her on the stage of a major new Hobart festival, Hay Days, but has helped her connect to and explore her Japanese heritage.

Born to a Tasmanian mother and Japanese father, Doi said Japan always felt like an intrinsic part of her identity.

"In Japan, they have a word for people who are half Japanese and half a different ethnicity - hafu," Doi said.

"I think because I was raised in Australia, Japan has always felt like a part of my identity. It's something that I feel quite disconnected from just by virtue of the fact that I don't live there."

"It's nice to have a familial connection to Japan, but also now a musical one. Doing the project has allowed me to see Japan in a bit of a different way."

According to Doi, J-pop rose to popularity in the 1990s, but her twist on the genre involved a fusion of language.

"Because Japanese is my second language, I do a bit of a mixture of English and Japanese in my music," Doi said.

"I played in heaps of indie bands over the last couple of years so it's quite a bit of, I suppose, more Australian indie pop influence in it as well just because that's my my musical background."

Doi joined her first band YSLA as a fill keyboardist and continued on for a number of years.

But her entry into J-pop had its roots in punk.

"In terms of the Emi Emi project, I was playing for the MONA in-house dinner band at Faro restaurant, and they had a themed dinner for about a year that was called Tokyo punk."

"They hired me to perform with that band because they wanted Japanese musicians and there's obviously not heaps of Japanese musicians in Tassie.

"I performed punk music with him for a year; the theme changed to Spain and when the Tokyo punk series finished I was feeling a bit bummed because I really enjoying singing in Japanese."

The experience opened up a door for the Emi Emi project as a way to continue improving her Japanese and explore different genres of Japanese music.

She said the project also enabled her to sustain a connection to her Japanese heritage.

"The lyrics are quite simplistic because I write the lyrics based on the language that I know and I understand," Doi said.

She released her first single,ngu last year which has a special connection to her Osaka-born father.

"A lot of the words in the lyrics are things that my dad used to say to me is a lot as a little kid, like keep going and don't give up" she said.

"It's simplistic, but it's also really meaningful to me. It's how I came to understand my Japanese cultural heritage and identity because it's just the bits of language I was using a lot when I was smaller."

It's still early days for Emi Emi and Doi said she was "still in a bit of a phase" of what she wanted the project to sound like.

"An interesting thing about the project has been trying to figure out which songs audiences respond to the most, because obviously most of the lyrics are in Japanese," she said.

"I think for the audiences that I play to in Australia and in Tasmania specifically, it's kind of an interesting exercise on figuring out what kind of genres or tones work best for for audiences.

"Trying to figure that out a little bit more and figure out what people enjoy the most is a bit of a goal this year as well."

She said it was difficult to navigate gigs with venues closing in Tasmania.

"But it's really exciting to be a part of a very thriving music community - I'm very grateful to have supportive musicians and friends," Doi said.

"And my parents who have been really helpful with things like improving lyric writing and helping me to understand new ways of making meaning through language."