Ringing up the dead: how a Japanese phone box changed the way we grieve

It occurred to him that his relationship with nature could be extended to the spirit world. “Over time, I started to view life and death not as separate things, but death as an extension of life, and life and death as points connected along a straight line. As such, I came to believe we could share our thoughts with those that have passed away,” he says. Death was on his mind: Sasaki’s cousin had just been diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live. He thought of his aunt, who had deteriorated rapidly after a bout of grief over her daughter’s cancer diagnosis. “I felt that our family should not have to suffer the same fate again.”

A year later, Sasaki stumbled across a white telephone box being removed from in front of a hotel in Kamaishi. “I imagined it would look beautiful in my garden,” he says. He couldn’t persuade the removal company to sell it to him. But serendipity struck. His friend said he had come into possession of a similar phone booth he could use. Sasaki rented a truck, drove to the neighbouring town and took it home.

At first, it idled in the corner of his garden as an ornament. But a year after his cousin passed away, he painted it to protect it against the weather and poured concrete to fix it in place. It wasn’t connected to anything – no earthing, no signal, no electricity. But he picked up the antique receiver and spoke for hours into the ether, imagining he was talking with his cousin.

He called it Kaze no Denwa, the “Phone of the Wind”. For now, it was just a single, weathered phone box in his garden. But he had a premonition that it would hold some sort of significance down the line. “As I was creating it, I had a feeling it would become a spiritual spot at some point in the future, though I did not share this with anyone at the time.”

Less than a year later, on 11 March 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake hit northeast Japan. It resulted in the catastrophic tsunami that decimated the coast, claiming the lives of 19,759 people in Otsuchi – a 10th of the town – and leaving many more injured or missing. Sasaki exhumed his phone box and relocated it to Kujira-yama, overlooking the ocean below. He encouraged the town’s residents, stricken by grief, to visit the Phone of the Wind. To put the receiver to their ear, like a shell on a beach, and hear the deceased. “You may not be able to see your loved ones in the same form, but if you close your eyes, the living and the dead can always coexist,” he said.

Over the next few months, thousands of mourners visited the site, waiting in line to do something they could do anywhere: speak into the wind. Later, pilgrims came from all over the world: at least 50,000 people have visited the original Phone of the Wind since 2011. It rapidly became a cultural phenomenon. Sasaki’s creation has inspired a documentary, a novel, a graphic story, a guide to grief, a children’s book, a poetry series and scores of songs by singer-songwriters on YouTube.

But what made it so powerful for some people? Primarily, it taps into an innate desire to stay connected with our lost loved ones. “Historically, that urge to make some kind of communication with the dead and have a leap of faith that it’s received is a very old thing, whether through writing or speaking at the grave or talking to someone in your head,” says Elaine Kasket, a cyberpsychologist and author of All the Ghosts in the Machine, which includes a section on Wind Phones.

For many in mourning, what’s been left unspoken can be especially painful. The Phone of the Wind gave the town’s grievers a medium to speak these words into existence, a ritualistic act of catharsis. The phone box itself holds real meaning. “That kind of containment and feeling of privacy creates almost a confessional booth where you pour out your heart,” says Kasket, noting that the background noise of a rotary phone also evokes a sense of two-way communication. The telephone was, after all, once thought to be a possible gateway to the spirit world, an idea entertained by Thomas Edison. “Every new communicative technology was, at one time, conceptualised to be some kind of conduit to the dead,” says Kasket.

Vitally, it creates a central space to grieve. Kasket believes the original Phone of the Wind is especially powerful due to it being at the scene of the disaster, overlooking the sea that claimed so many lives. But it also forced those gripped by depression to get outside. “People who are grieving can close their hearts and shut themselves off from the world – not seeing anyone or talking to anyone, not leaving the house. They end up in a state where they lose all motivation to do anything,” Sasaki says. “But by opening the door just a little, in doing something as small as going to visit the Phone of the Wind, they connect with the impetus to move from doing nothing to doing something to recover from grief.”

Sceptics might ask, do people actually believe they are speaking to their loved ones? It varies. “Grief is idiosyncratic,” Kasket says. “The question of whether or not they hear you doesn’t really matter,” she thinks. And, anyway, it’s not too dissimilar to the way we communicate via email or message, sending things out into the ether. “We’re very used to this in the digital age. It’s almost even easier to imagine that we’re being heard.” Perhaps, when considered as a one-way conversation, it’s more effective. “It is the grieving people themselves who direct their sorrow and pain into the telephone. Through this act of self-dialogue, they are able to observe and organise their thoughts and the cause of their grief,” Sasaki says.

In March 2020 Amy Dawson, a woman living in North Carolina, imagined she was standing atop Kujira-yama. Her daughter Emily had passed away after being sick for three years. Grappling with an immense level of grief, Dawson began educating herself on different coping mechanisms and took a certified course in grief management. When she came across stories of the Phone of the Wind online, the concept resonated. “It’s the world’s most famous site of resilience. It’s a beautiful gift,” she says over Zoom, partly because Emily’s mobile phone had been a lifeline for her during her illness. “It was truly her connection to the outside world.”

Dawson began to occupy herself with documenting Wind Phones across the world and designed a website: My Wind Phone. “Let the wind take your words,” its tagline reads. As well as mapping out existing Wind Phones, the platform encourages others to set up their own. “It inspired me to really develop the website to try to help people. I never anticipated it would become this beautiful thing across the world,” she says.

She also set up her own Wind Phone in her garden, in memory of Emily. “It felt like a way I could stay close with her. We were inseparable. Always together. I felt like she was up there answering.” In a way, Dawson likes to think that her daughter exists throughout the entire network. “I always say, if anybody’s answering a Phone of the Wind, it’s my daughter. So if someone is calling their mum, she’s the operator.”

When she started the website, only 20 or so Wind Phones existed across the world. But soon, word spread online and other people struggling to overcome their grief began to create their own Wind Phones, available for anyone grieving to use. She laid out a series of guidelines based on Sasaki’s original vision, offering detailed suggestions on location, the type of phone and the booth itself to help people create their own. “There are essential aspects to remember when creating and placing a Wind Phone, ensuring it resonates deeply with those who seek solace and remembrance,” it reads.

Now, at the time of writing, 353 public Wind Phones exist, 249 of them in the United States. Each listing in the map features a short description, mirroring a bench dedication and remembering the lost loved ones who inspired their creation. There are now a few in the UK, including boxes at Mary Stevens Hospice in Stourbridge and Fowles Funeral Services in Winsford. Testimonials on the site, left like notes at a shrine, express the resonance of the project. “I lost my best friend a few years ago, and nothing’s been the same. I called her on a Wind Phone and felt like someone threw me a lifeline,” reads one, written by a woman named Donna L. “I told her everything I hadn’t been able to say to anyone since she’s been gone. More than anything, I realised that she’s still with me and I can still talk to her. Thank you for the space to embrace my grief.”

During November 2024, a document attributed to Sasaki was published on My Wind Phone. It suggested that Wind Phones must feature a quiet space, an enclosed cabin, a guardian and be free to use. It also noted that Sasaki was keen to pursue a certification process to approve Wind Phones that matched his original vision. It was published, undoubtedly with good intentions, by a Swiss custodian of a Wind Phone; he had visited Sasaki with an interpreter to discuss the future of what was now a movement. But the open letter, it turns out, was published without Sasaki’s knowledge, and before he had ample time to fully consider whether verifying Wind Phones was a good idea. (Sasaki had, after sleeping on it, decided it wasn’t, but it was too late.)

It is true that the Phone of the Wind inventor wants to retain the original spirit of his creation. There are, after all, some valid fears surrounding the concept becoming a corporate service. Kasket notes that websites have previously offered pay-to-host online obituaries and that the Wind Phones placed in the grounds of funeral homes may be more of a promotional tool than anything else. Grief is increasingly a lucrative industry, after all. According to TechRound, a technology news website, the “death tech” sector – which promises to connect us to late family members through far more advanced (and artificial) means than the Wind Phone – is now valued at £100bn globally.

But Sasaki doesn’t wish to be the gatekeeper of the Wind Phone concept and now believes the certification approach is the wrong direction. “Policing what does or doesn’t align with the Phone of the Wind comes from a questionable business motive – it is a matter of irrelevance to those who are in the throes of grief and despair,” he says.

This blip in the community’s collective vision highlights the fragility of anything connected to grief. But it’s also been a fruitful reminder of the origins of the Phone of the Wind: it’s something deeply personal. Sasaki emphasises compassion.“My guiding principle is a quote by Mr Daiei Kaneko of the Jodo Shinshu Otani school: ‘Sorrow is saved by sorrow that understands sorrow. Tears are comforted by tears that shed with tears.’” It’s why he’s been holding grief care seminars based on the Phone of the Wind principles, looking to reflect on the project and how it slots into the fields of psychotherapy.

It’s been many moons since Sasaki’s epiphany atop Kujira-yama. But, to this day, he tirelessly tends to his original Phone of the Wind.

“Currently, I manage and maintain an approximately 6,600-square-metre garden by myself. That’s why I’m out there with my lawn mower, pruning shears, hand chainsaw, shove and pickaxe all year round.”

He’s come to the realisation that life, compared to what follows, is fleeting. But death shouldn’t sever our relationships. “Compared to the eternity after death, life is unquestionably brief. It is therefore of great significance that we not only maintain a kizuna – a bond with others – while we are alive, but also an enduring connection even after we die.”