Theme: Present to the Future
Guest: Hirofumi Gomi
President & CEO, Office Burn Co., Ltd. / Haunted House Producer

The guest for the 46th Oyako Day Online Talk Live is Hirofumi Gomi, who has created more than 100 haunted houses over the past 30 years, beginning with Maro Akaji’s Panorama Mystery House at Korakuen Yuenchi (now Tokyo Dome City Attractions) in 1992.

Through the experience of fear, Gomi has mastered the art of stirring human emotions and transforming them into excitement and fun. Bruce first met him while working on the promotional poster for a haunted house attraction at Korakuen.

What lies behind fear? This promises to be a conversation that is a little mysterious—and highly stimulating.

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The Home to Which the Noise Returns

There came a day when I stopped going on family trips.
I had been glued to my desk preparing for university entrance exams… or perhaps, I had just come up with that excuse.
The truth was, I simply couldn’t find a reason to go to noisy places with my family anymore.

— In other words, I longed for silence.

My family silently accepted it. Gradually, the number of trips they took without me increased.
They must have sensed that I was yearning for “serenity.”

In my house, silence never truly existed.
The TV was always on, laughter shook the walls, the ventilation fan hummed, and the air conditioner groaned.
Even if I curled up in the furthest corner of the house, the noise would follow me.

— However, when my family was gone, silence would unexpectedly arrive.
A silence so empty it felt almost unnatural.
The body left behind in the stillness experienced a strange sense of liberation.
The air spreading from corner to corner of the room didn’t clear with a “shh” but instead carried a tension, as if it were on the verge of snapping. I tried to merge with it.

I wanted to live in that stillness forever.

…That was my feeling for the first three hours.

Soon, the silence turned into a ringing in my ears, summoning phantom sounds that gnawed at my mind.
I started feeling ill, and in the end, I turned on the TV and played music…

— Ah, please come back.

When the door opened, the noise rushed in.
Laughter bounced through the air, the clinking of dishes echoed, and the TV blared noisily.
I frowned, but deep inside, I felt relieved.

The stillness certainly comforted me.
But it was the noise that connected me to something.

I hear there is something called “OYAKO Day.”
I want to celebrate that day not as a day to give flowers or exchange special words, but simply—
as a day to truly appreciate the value of the noise.

The discomfort of being alone.
The disharmony born from the interactions between parent and child.
That disharmony is my life, my comfort,
— and the place to which I belong.

by Nao Sasaki / age: 22 / Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

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We look forward to seeing your wonderful photographs. Everyone is warmly encouraged to join and participate!

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We look forward to reading your heartfelt stories. Everyone is warmly encouraged to take part!

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Please stay tuned just a little longer until voting opens!

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The film opens with “Chapter Three.” The world is heading toward collapse. Earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires—catastrophe after catastrophe unfolds. Then mysterious billboards begin appearing across town:

“Thank you, Chuck.”

A sudden expression of gratitude toward a man nobody seems to know.

What is this?

At first, I assumed it was going to be some kind of global-scale disaster movie. But then the film quietly flips itself inside out. As the chapters count backward—from Three to Two to One—we begin tracing Chuck’s youth, and the mystery slowly unravels.

The “end of the world” turns out to be the end of one ordinary man’s life.

The 39 years of memories belonging to a man named Chuck—that tiny personal universe—is revealed to be equal in scale to a dying planet.

And that is something universal, something that will come for every one of us eventually.

What struck me most deeply was that the film is not about dreams fulfilled, but dreams left unrealized. The things every life quietly lets go of without even noticing. The movie neither condemns nor comforts us for this. It simply places that truth gently before us. And somehow, that sadness catches you off guard.

The characters, too, appear unrelated at first glance, yet are secretly connected by thin invisible threads. Life itself is like that, the film quietly suggests. And when Mark Hamill appears onscreen, visibly aged, the passage of time suddenly transcends fiction and overlaps with the audience’s own sense of years lived.

I was astonished that a writer nearing eighty could still possess this level of creative vitality.

This is not the kind of film where you walk out saying, “That was fun!” without hesitation. But perhaps that is precisely proof of its depth.

Among the human dramas adapted from Stephen King’s works, this has become one I won’t soon forget.

The post Thank You, Chuck — A Quiet Masterpiece That Slowly Sinks In: A Microcosm Called Life appeared first on 「親子の日」Oyako Day.

May 5 (Children’s Day)

Oyako Photo Session (Studio AO)

Applications are accepted by email.
Please include the following subject line:

E-mail: yoshiko@intheozone.net
Subject: Hayama Art Festival Event — Children’s Day Oyako Photo Session

Date: May 5 (Children’s Day)
Time: 9:00 a.m. – approximately 12:00 p.m.

Details and participation information will be sent directly by email to those who apply.

Official Website

https://www.hayama-artfes.org

Inquiries

yoshiko@intheozone.net

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A special talk event accompanying the two-person exhibition by photographer Bruce Osborn and painter Masaru Fukuda, whom Bruce first met in the early 1980s.

Official Website

https://www.hayama-artfes.org

Inquiries

yoshiko@intheozone.net

Venue

Lanai

Masaru & Bruce Two-Person Exhibition

Bruce first encountered Masaru Fukuda when Fukuda was still active as an art director.
Now, nearly fifty years later, that long-standing connection has taken shape as this joint exhibition.

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