These Photos of a Japanese Pop Artist Dissolve a Language Barrier

According to a story that’s made the rounds for years, when Pepsi launched in China in the early 1980s, their ad slogan “Come alive! You’re in the Pepsi generation” was translated as “We bring your ancestors back from the grave.” This urban legend has been quoted in articles by everyone from Forbes to the Telegraph, and whatever this slideshow was about. It’s also technically unverified. Snopes’ fact-checking points out that Pepsi have never come forward to confirm nor deny that a version of the wonky translated advert is true. Still, the fact-checking ultimately labels the origins of the “ancestors from the grave” line as undetermined.

That this unverified story has cemented itself into fact highlights something universal: language is so nuanced that shoddy translations of it implore yawning pitfalls to gape between every few words. You get a similar effect when you try to seamlessly translate a joke. The cultural relativity of language, both spoken and non-verbal, means that more often than not, you’ll flop if you try. And yet, at other times, you can get your point across, over a language barrier. Photographer Francesca Allen learned as much, when she spent just under a month in Tokyo in spring 2017, shooting and getting to know mesmerising local experimental pop musician Aya Gloomy.

You see, 24-year-old Aya only really speaks Japanese. And 25-year-old Francesca – who shot M.I.A for us a few years ago – is an English speaker. So, to communicate, “there wasn’t that much talking involved,” Francesca remembers, “and neither of us could really communicate anything deeper than quite simple sentences. So sometimes we would use a language app or… Sometimes we’d… speak about things that were right in front of us.” Things like a cute dog, or what they’d eat next, she says, giggling to herself. “It was very in-the-moment communication rather than, ‘oh I have this family.’ It was quite visual, present communication, if that makes any sense.”

It does, and it probably will to you, if you’ve ever ended up in a part of the world where most of your communication comes in the form of flailed hand gestures and a few basic words clumsily cobbled together. Francesca’s new photobook Aya, documents her time with her titular subject, and how they managed to build a friendship that knocked several bricks off their language barrier. But more than that, Aya’s music leaps over that barrier too. She largely sings in Japanese on her album Riku No Kotou – loosely translated as “island of land” or “land island” – released this April. But her blend of 80s synths, clean pop vocal rhythms and slightly eerie string-effect instrumentation results in a dreamy album that feels nostalgic for something I’ve never lived – even though I don’t know what she’s saying. By listening to her work, you can experience a sliver of the connection that Francesca felt with her in-person: a warmth, an intimacy and a shimmery sort of charisma.

They met in 2016, on Francesca’s first trip to Japan, through a mutual friend: “a girl called Nina [Utashiro]” Francesca tells me. Finding people to photograph was hard to navigate, as an English-speaker, so Nina’s friendship circle came in handy. The pair’s first meeting reads a bit like a blind date. They met for a couple of hours, took some photos in Tokyo’s suburbs, then headed to Aya’s label Big Love Records in Harajuku, with an HQ that houses a bar and shop.

By the time Francesca returned to Tokyo last spring, she knew she wanted to develop her portraits of Aya into a book. So, they worked together again. Left alone, Francesca realised both women were “quite shy in the beginning. And I think… I don’t know, I think it developed into a genuine friendship. At first, obviously the purpose of our relationship was practical: arranging to hang out and take pictures, and all that.” But over time, whether shooting at Aya’s house or grabbing lunch, a bond developed between them. Sure, they weren’t talking for hours late into the night, like some sort of Lost in Translation fantasy, but they didn’t need that. “It just works. You don’t need to know everything about someone to be close to them.”

And so to Aya’s music. I joke with Francesca that speaking to her feels like the closest I’ll get to Aya, by proxy. Luckily, that’s where Aya’s album comes in. I put it on, over headphones, when Francesca first got in touch about her book. I didn’t know what to expect. In portraits, Aya looks like so many young women who express themselves through their hair colour (pastel tones), aesthetically pleasing dress sense (primary colours, at points, reminiscent of early 00s teen style at others) and art. Francesca has an incredible knack for shooting and lighting women with integrity, and a softness, which in this case means you view Aya through Francesca’s prism rather than in the type of light a typical press photo would look to shine.

It takes about three and a half songs for Riku No Kotou’s impact to land. Opening track “Shizukanikieru (静かに消える)” kicks off with a single melody line played on what sounds like a digital keyboard, soon joined by a rumbling synth and a four-to-the-floor pounding bassline. It sounds like what might be played in an underground, red-lit club for people who prefer morosely stirring ice cubes around their glasses to dancing: it’s downtempo, and melancholy; it pulsates anyway. Midway through the album, “DAIKAKU” drenches Aya’s voice in reverb, sending it ricocheting between your ears over an initially sparse beat that explodes into a classic piece of 80s synthpop. She can sound in one moment like Fever Ray – see “I Sink” and “DRIVE”, earlier, wonkier tracks that made the album too – and in another like Zola Jesus, Kelly Lee Owens or techno-inspired, glitch-pop Norwegian duo Smerz.

In a recent interview (shouts to Google Translate), Aya brought up 80s Japanese pop star and idol Chiemi Manebe, who was also part of a pop trio called Pansy. You can hear the remnants of songs like Chiemi’s “Targeted Girl” in the glossy and feminine energy of Riku No Kotou. Aya takes that energy, and suffuses it with a darkness, without losing its tight pop structure. After playing the album on repeat for an obsessive week, you too may be itching to see what Aya’s like in a live setting. I have to defer to Francesca again, who watched Aya play on the first night they met up again, on that 2017 Tokyo trip. “She’s amazing. She’s so small, and obviously it’s just her performing on stage alone. I always think that’s so challenging for musicians, and it’s not something I’d naturally enjoy – a performance with just one person on stage. But she has an amazing stage presence,” and one that seems to make her double in size.

In those moments, a performer can pull you into their world when you don’t speak their language. They can help you understand a sense of longing, or contemplation, or celebration. I mean, the whole western-lens concept of "world music" wouldn't be successful otherwise, right? It's testament to an artist's skill that they're able to help you tap into an emotion, and guide you along the way when you don't technically speak the same language. Though Aya's not a huge name, like fellow Japanese group Wednesday Campanella and their massively charming lead singer KOM_I, she's also able to hop over her national borders and impact people halfway across the world. And that's something I know to be true – the Pepsi story, on the other hand, I'll leave to you to grapple with.

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'Aya' launched on 4 September, and is published by Libraryman. See more photos from the book below.