Kanji for Father

父 (chichi / fu) is the father — in the oldest script, a hand gripping a stone axe: the one who works and wards. The reading changes with the register of respect: one’s own father is 父 (chichi), someone else’s is お父さん (otōsan), and the formal 父親 (chichioya) covers fatherhood itself. 父の日, Father’s Day, arrived from America and stuck.

The character fathers metaphors as well as families: 医学の父 is “the father of medicine”, exactly as English builds the phrase, and 父方 is the paternal side of a family tree. Its partner 母 (mother) completes 父母 — parents — and the affectionate slang 親父 (oyaji) covers everything from “my old man” to the ramen shop’s proprietor.

Classical Japan bound the role into 孝, filial piety — the virtue of honouring parents — and folklore ranked paternal terror in the four fearsome things: 地震雷火事親父 — earthquake, thunder, fire, father.