Aya Nakamura

"“Finally getting out of the camps was a great day. It felt so good to get out of the gates, and just know that you were going home…finally. Home wasn't where I left it though. Getting back, I was just shocked to see what had happened, our home being bought by a different family, different decorations in the windows; it was our house, but it wasn't anymore. It hurt not being able to return home, but moving into a new home helped me I believe. I think it helped me to bury the past a little, too, you know, move on from what had happened.""

"Everyone sings in my family. But I’m the only one who dared to sing ‘for real'"

"I never took singing lessons. I was like my daughter, singing in front of videos with a hairbrush as a microphone! Probably because I was imitating the songs I watched on TV. I thought it was great"

"I was studying fashion at La Courneuve. I wanted to be a designer, but I stopped enjoying it, so I sang"

"When I was younger, I studied pattern making and I really wanted to be a pattern maker. It takes so much patience, though, and that’s not my forte. I quit in spite of myself simply because I couldn’t. That was my closest relationship with fashion"

"At the beginning of my career, I was rather skeptical about this idea of a role model. But it is a reality: I have influence"

"If I allow, through my work and my commitments, certain women to assert themselves, then it is a source of pride! I believe that influence must be useful. Otherwise it is useless"

"Women’s emancipation. That’s my fight"

"It’s all violence against women that I fight. If I can use my music and my fame for them, I never hesitate,"