Meet Eri Blossom

We recently connected with Eri Blossom and have shared our conversation below.

Eri, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

I often get inspirations from books, movies and music, which helps me to keep my creativity alive. I recently read a book about Japanese music history by my favorite YouTuber Mino. It inspired me to listen to Japanese music from 2000 years ago to the present, and made me realize the possibility of it in J-pop and also for me to write songs in the Japanese language.

Also, it’s important for me to have a conversation with myself. So I write whatever I want on my notebook every morning. If I want to write just one word, it’s fine. If I feel like drawing, sure. But I constantly like to output my thoughts to see how these inspirations come out through my filter, which also helps my songwriting as well.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m an NYC based independent artist from Japan.

I was born and raised in Japan and moved to NYC in 2014. When I visited NYC for the first time in 2012, I came to take lessons with the daughter of Ray Charles, Sheila Raye Charles since Ray Charles had been my inspiration. I had some street performances at train stations such as Times Square and Union Square, which changed my life. I performed some songs with friends and saw a guy who seemed to enjoy our performance. So we decided to talk to him after the performance and found out that he was actually deaf. He told us that he had a great time and left one dollar. This experience made me decide to learn music in NYC.

One of my themes as an artist is feminism. I would like to share my honest thoughts and experiences as a Japanese woman through my music. I released a single called ” Breakthrough”. Will Smith’s incident at the Academy Awards inspired me to write this song. I saw some messages on Twitter (Current X) by Japanese people (including women) that supported Mr. Smith. I was shocked that feminism in Japan is way behind. People still treat women like children. The craziest part is women accept it. Through the song, I would like to present a new way of being a Japanese woman and break the stereotype of Japanese women. I hope to convey this message through but also share with the world what’s going on with us.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

That would be positivity, flexibility and perseverance. It’s been a little tough to do music since I’m a foreigner. I had to learn the culture, language, and communicational skills. But I never give up and always trust my musical gift. I look up at the challenges from all angles and see what I can learn from them.

Also I recently started embracing more my Japanese side, which helps me to grow as an artist. Since I moved to the US, I was focused on adapting to American culture but felt different with it, because I can’t tell my stories without my Japanese background. This made me realize the true meaning of trusting my gift as well. It’s okay to have an accent. That’s what makes me unique.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

Being able to access my inner emotional core and learning self-acceptance.

Something happened in my personal life that made me realize that the previous relationship with myself stopped working. I used to ignore my inner voice constantly and pushed myself too hard. Since I noticed this issue was serious, I decided to listen to myself. Asking myself what I need at the moment and doing my best to provide it. This has allowed me to have access to my real self and started enjoying being myself.

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Image Credits

石本一人旅、Sophia Elizabeth

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