Entries are now being accepted for the Oyako Day Essay Contest, one of the official events of Oyako Day.
A cherished memory. An ordinary moment. Feelings that are difficult to express face to face.
Why not share your own Oyako story in the form of an essay?
The submission deadline is August 31, 2026.
For entry guidelines and submission details, please visit:
▼ Oyako Day Essay Contest
https://oyako.org/en/essaycontest/
We look forward to receiving your stories.
Parent and child: the bond that is never really broken
During the filming of the movie, Oyako, present to the future, I was reminded of the strength of family bonds. In Japanese, we have the word Oyako combining the characters for parent and child into a single word. I’m impressed by the depth of meaning held in this one word, as if it was a monument to the lives we live. Maybe people these days think it’s just a word like any other. If only these people could participate in Oyako Day, then they’d see just how fine a word it is. Oyako Day has my wholehearted support.
The thread that ties parents and children feeds a loom of communication, weaving past to present and present to future. The information society has broadened the horizontal world but we’ve neglected the hopes of its vertical axis. Together, parents and children can change the world by being just what they should be, a true family. I hope people will think about that on OYAKO DAY.
To strengthen the bonds between parents and children, we must “Look one another eye to eye”,
“Rub each other shoulder to shoulder” and “Speak to each other”. I give my full support to Oyako Hi through the advancement of Oyako Gymnastics.
The relation between parents and children has been the source for everything dramatic since ancient times. We need to move this relation to an even richer place. For the future of all of us.
When I look at my son’s bad habits, I see my own. I’m sure it’ll happen to my son, the same way, when he notices his own child’s vices. This tie between parent and child, for better or for worse, endures.
We had our picture done at the Mainichi Newspaper “Oyako interview session”. When I saw the photogrpah, I was reminded that however much we get wound up in our worries over parenting, we still can’t ever get enough of our kids. So obvious, I suppose, but it took that picture to remind me.
Photographs open the heart on a page and then stay with us repeating the message. We go on living through one thing or another but the picture is there to call us home.
I hope the bonds between parents and children will grow forever deeper and that everybody will celebrate Oyako Day.
Friends, acquaintances, neighbors, bosses & underlings. There are a lot of different relations between people, but being parent and child is the most intimate and natural one. It’s a strange relation fraught with overboard spoiling and clumsy communications that bathes in deep trust.
When I saw the picture Bruce Osborn did for us, I was taken aback. I discovered things that made me reconsider what parents and children are all about. It was a wonderful thing to bring home. I think putting aside a special day, like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, to rethink and restart our parent-child relation is a wonderful idea. I support Oyako Day.
Bruce Osborn’s Oyako photographs are about what ties people together. His present to us are the wonderful When I look through his pictures, I feel I’m in the Utopia of photography.
I hope Bruce will go on for years with Oyako Day which gives all of us a fresh opportunity to come closer to each other.
What I learned from my father and mother, I pass on to my two children.
There’s a set of habits and some ways of thinking, but what the family really passes on is love.
Nothing would bring me greater happiness than to see that later, when my two children have become parents themselves, they’ve fully understood this.
It’s an important message, which is why I support Oyako Day.
OTAKE Shinobu (actress and TV personality) source: wikipedia
The Oyako relation is my guide to life. By creating happiness at home, I hope that one day my children will feel the same way. This is the marvelous cycle of Oyako.
I fully support the Oyako movement.
Being too strict can make people hard-hearted, but too much coddling can ruin their lives.
When I’m training my daughter for wrestling and I push her hard, my wife Hatsue follows behind with words of affection.
Then, when I get home, I get my own dose of discipline.
“You call it training but it’s no better than bullying” she cries out, right in front of Kyoko, who completes the circle by saying, “Don’t be so mean to Papa.”
That’s how it is in the Hamaguchi Arena. It is the Oyako’s fate, to harmonize the strict and generous.
“OYAKO DAY” – I love you !!
Ultra Chichi (father):
We’ve heard about the Oyako movement on Nebula M78!! Oyako Day is not just about Earth, but can speak to the whole universe. Let’s make it so!
Ultra Haha (mother):
Ultraman Taro, along with the other Ultra Brothers and Ultra Warriors, are all my children. There are many kinds of Oyako, but no matter who we are, the parent and child relationship is special. That’s why it’s so wonderful to have Oyako Day so we can all celebrate it together. I give my full-hearted support to Oyako Day.
Ultraman Taro (son):
I’m 12,000 years old now, but whatever your age, you always have a mother and father. I am proud to be the son of Ultra Chichi and Ultra Haha. When I get to be 13,000 years old, I’d really like for Bruce to be there to take another Oyako photo of us. Let’s do a super photo session on Nebula M78! We’re all looking forward to it!
Oyako Day Heals the Illness of Separation
We have an expression in Japanese, 古住今来, which the dictionary translates as “in all ages” or “since antiquity”. If you look at the characters, you see “from of old until now”. This expression is not really hard to understand, but these days most of the young don’t know it. People are infected with tunnel vision. They see only dips and dabs from the great tide of humanity’s past and have lost the ability to see the world beyond their present.
“Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going?” This conjecture is forever shadowing us, our groups and organizations, our societies and governments; and through them, nature and all life on our planet. Bruce and Yoshiko’s group express the importance of this proposition in “OYAKO” and reveal it to people through this basic relation.
The “OYAKO DAY” project, based as it is on parents and children, whispers to us of the grandchildren who will come. Japanese already have the word OYAKO. Someday the ferment set off by Bruce’s team will distill a new word, running across all generations.
The Oyako relation is my guide to life. By creating happiness at home, I hope that one day my children will feel the same way. This is the marvelous cycle of Oyako.
I fully support the Oyako movement.
The pleasure of parents & children cooking together.
The profound strength a family’s taking meals together can give us.
Oyako Day is also a wonderful opportunity to bring families together around the dining table.
OYAKO ACROSS THE WORLD !
When I first heard about making a movie based on Bruce Osborn’s Oyako Photos, I thought it was a wonderful idea. When asked if I would like to do the script, it was a new challenge, but I was just thrilled.
Parents and children, are such fun to watch. That’s what the movies about. By fun, we’re talking about something like there being as many opinions as there are people. For anyone seeing the film, it should be the same thing. Each will carry away something different, and that’s the way it should be.
“OYAKO Movie” mixes documentary, interviews and drama, but without Bruce’s tremendous work shooting portraits of parents and children, it would never have existed. I believe that OYAKO will some day be an international word and that this day is not far off. I support OYAKO DAY with all my heart.
I became a parent 35 years ago, and 11 years ago, my child became a parent too. It all happens so fast. You’re totally involved in bringing them up healthy & strong, and the next thing you know they’ve got their own kids. We’re sad because it’s all gone by so quickly, but be a trooper: you’ve done a great service for our country by adding to the population.
When our children grow up and become parents themselves, they can finally begin to understand what a parent feels. The ties between parent and child are deep and enduring. Just look at us: we move the same, talk the same, laugh the same. But just when you’re thinking how alike you are, you see that they’re totally different. And then, an instant later, there they are looking just like you again! I keep thinking that no matter how you cut it, a frog makes frogs. Oyako Day continues to have my full support.
2015 will be the 13th year that Bruce Osborn organizes OYAKO Day. We may all take for granted that parents watch out for their children and that their children are grateful for the family they live in, but Oyako Day is a special moment for Parents & Children to take time together to think and talk about just how special they are to each other. It’s a story I try to tell with my music at Hirahara Sanchi concerts.
I am one of Oyako Day’s strong supporters.
From the moment of the newborn’s kickstart gasp, mother, child and father receive their title of “Oyako.” Oyako goes beyond blood ties. It’s a bond of the heart kept untarnished by unlimited liability. Bruce was drawn to this word, so special in Japan, and drawn so close that now the two are inseparable. Exposed in Bruce’s parents and children photographs, we feel the heartbeat of each and every family. Oyako are all so different, and yet in one thing they are all the same, their love. The pulse of Japan’s Oyako billows rhythmically. I know it can stretch out across the sea, calling all the world to renewed tomorrows. Let Oyako Day bring us all, here in Japan and other places throughout the world, together. Okāsan Shimbun will continue to spread the word about Oyako Day.
Of all the pictures ever taken of me, this has to be my happiest face.
Thank you Bruce, I think it will always be my favorite photo.
Oyako is amazing !!!
The relationship I have with my mother is one of the most meaningful relationships in my life; she really helped to shape the person that I am today. Being able to travel with her to Japan (the first time for both of us) was such a wonderful experience and commemorating the trip by having Bruce photograph us for the Oyako interview in Mainichi newspaper made it even more special. Not only do we now have Bruce’s wonderful images to help us remember the trip, but they also serve as a reminder – for us, and to many others in Japan – of how important the bonds between parents and their children are.
