In December 2010, a Japanese garden designer named Sasaki Itaru (family name first) put an old telephone booth in his garden in Otsuchi, Japan. He bought from a pachinko parlor that was closing. Inside, he placed a rotary phone, an old kind of telephone. He wanted to use it to ‘talk’ to his favorite cousin who had died of stomach cancer earlier in the year. He called it the 風の電話 (kaze no denwa). This can be translated as wind telephone/phone or telephone/phone of the wind. He stated that when he created it, he knew his words could not be carried on a phone line to his cousin, so he decided to have them carried on the wind instead.

Three months later, the Great East Japan Earthquake and the tsunami after it hit Otsuchi, and ten percent of the citizens were either killed or considered missing. This was one of the most affected towns in Japan. Soon after, Sasaki noticed people coming to use his phone and officially opened it to the public. It has become a place of pilgrimage with over 25,000 people visiting the original booth since it opened. The original wooden phone booth has since been replaced with a heartier aluminum one because of so many visitors and the fact that it’s on a hill overlooking the ocean. The idea has spread across the globe, and there are now wind telephones in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Spoken words are powerful, especially in mourning. People may want to have conversations with the dead again using the ritual of a phone call. A very ritualized option is a wind telephone, or a phone that is disconnected and from which mourners expect no response during conversations. The phone can cause high amounts of emotion despite only hosting a one-sided conversation. This is like something called empty-chair monologues in which people confront losses. These conversations are also one-sided conversations when people express thoughts to the dead without response. There is no feedback, so there is true freedom of speech.

For more information about why this kind of therapy can work, check out the pages for continuing bonds and the material culture of death.

Wind telephones are very new and all look very different. They are usually in private places to allow people to speak openly unlike cemeteries and other deathscapes. Sometimes, people bring photographs to talk to, but it is more common for people to just have conversations.

All wind telephones are different, but they’re all used the same way. There is a disconnected phone without a dial tone, and one just dials the number of the person they would like to call, alive or dead, and has a conversation. These can be as short or long as the caller likes, and they can come back as often as they wish. People can go to any or all wind telephones for their calls. Some have a button phone while others – most of them – have rotary phones. Some are actual booths while most are in more open areas. Some are open 24 hours a day with a light; some are only during things like park hours from dawn to dusk. Information about multiple wind telephones can be found on the wind telephone page on this site.