Wind Phone
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The is an unconnected
telephone booth A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; typically the user steps into the booth and closes the boot ...
in
Ōtsuchi An is a large wooden war mallet used by the samurai class of feudal Japan The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to the Paleolithic, around 38–39,000 years ago. The Jōmon period, named after its cord- ...
,
Iwate Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It is the second-largest Japanese prefecture (behind Hokkaido) at , with a population of 1,165,886 (as of July 1, 2023). Iwate Prefecture borders Aomori Pre ...
, Japan, where visitors can hold one-way conversations with deceased loved ones. Initially created by garden designer Itaru Sasaki in 2010 to help him cope with his cousin's death, it was opened to the public in the following year after the
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami On 11 March 2011, at 14:46:24 Japan Standard Time, JST (05:46:24 UTC), a  9.0–9.1 Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region. It lasted approx ...
killed over 15,000 people in the
Tōhoku region The , Northeast region, , or consists of the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This traditional region consists of six prefectures (): Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata. Tōhoku retains ...
. The wind phone has since received over 30,000 visitors. A number of replicas have been constructed around the world, and it has served as the inspiration for several novels and films.


Origin and description

In 2010, Itaru Sasaki, a garden designer from Ōtsuchi, learned that his cousin had terminal cancer with three months to live. After his cousin's death, Sasaki set up an old telephone booth in his garden in December 2010, to continue to feel connected to him by "talking" to him on the phone. According to Sasaki, the wind phone was not designed with any specific religious connotation, but rather as a way to reflect on his loss. In an interview, he stated, "Because my thoughts couldn't be relayed over a regular phone line, I wanted them to be carried on the wind." The wind phone is a white, glass-paned telephone booth containing a black, disconnected
rotary dial A rotary dial is a component of a telephone or a telephone switchboard that implements a signaling technology in telecommunications known as pulse dialing. It is used when initiating a telephone call to transmit the destination telephone numb ...
telephone on a metal shelf. A notebook is placed next to the telephone for messages of remembrance. The booth is on a hill that overlooks Ōtsuchi.


Public opening

The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake resulted in the deaths of at least 19,759 people most especially in tsunamis in the Tōhoku region, including over 1,200 people in Ōtsuchi (about 10 percent of the town's population). Sasaki subsequently opened the wind phone to the public to allow visitors to call their friends and family who had died in the disaster. It has since been visited by over 30,000 people. On January 7, 2017, strong winds blew off the roof of the wind phone and broke the glass doors. Local carpenters, including ones who had previously visited the wind phone, quickly volunteered to repair it on January 10, and the wind phone was reopened by the next day. In April 2018, Sasaki announced that the wooden and metal parts of the booth were deteriorating due to age and corrosion, even after a new coat of paint, and that he hoped to replace the old booth with a corrosion-resistant aluminum booth. People responded with donations totaling about one million yen, and Sasaki installed the sturdier aluminum booth in August 2018.


Replicas

Several replicas of the Ōtsuchi wind phone have been built around the world. In
Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...
, local artist Jordan Stern constructed a wind telephone in February 2017, to commemorate the 36 people who died in the
Ghost Ship warehouse fire On December 2, 2016, at about 11:20 p.m. PST, a fire started in a former warehouse that had been unlawfully converted into an artist collective with living spaces (named the Ghost Ship) in Oakland, California, which was hosting a concert w ...
, including his friend. According to Stern, the purpose of the wind phone was to comfort "a field of people grieving in Oakland". Altrúchas, an anonymous art collective based in
Dublin, Ireland Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
, set up a wind phone (''fón gaoithe'') atop Two Rock Mountain in August 2017. The wind phone, which was constructed from salvaged materials, was installed without permission; at the time, Altrúchas stated that they planned on "maintaining it indefinitely". It was destroyed for unknown reasons less than two weeks after it was set up. In a statement, Altrúchas said that the destruction was "a strong statement from people that didn't like the project", but that they would not let it "take away from the positivity". Tomohiko and Kazuko Kutsuna, a married couple in Tahara,
Aichi Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Aichi Prefecture has a population of 7,461,111 () and a geographic area of with a population density of . Aichi Prefecture borders Mie Prefecture to the ...
, Japan, installed a red-painted replica in 2018. Their telephone booth, named the , was built in memory of one of Kazuko's students, an 18-year-old woman who died by suicide in 2009. Additional wind phones have been placed throughout the United States and Canada.


In media


Literature

Sasaki, the creator of the Ōtsuchi wind phone, wrote a book of reflections titled in 2017. The book was published by Kazama Shobo. The 2020 novel ''The Phone Box at the Edge of the World'' by Italian writer Laura Imai Messina tells the story of a woman who loses her family in the Tōhoku tsunami and travels to the wind phone, where she meets a widower and his daughter who have experienced similar losses. The novel was inspired by Messina's visit to the Ōtsuchi wind phone in 2011. ''The Phone Booth in Mr. Hirota's Garden'', a 2020 novel by Canadian writer Heather Smith, is a fictionalized version of the wind phone's origins. According to Smith, she was inspired by a
National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
podcast about the wind phone and exchanged emails with Sasaki during the writing process, stating that it "was a thrill to receive his blessing and an honour to share his beautiful approach to grief through this book."


Film

The 2019 Austrian
short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...
''The Wind Phone'', written and directed by Kristin Gerweck, follows seven fictional strangers who visit the Japanese wind phone. Gerweck wrote the screenplay when she learned about the wind phone after her grandmother's death, saying: "I was intrigued by the emotional realities that could emerge in this metaphysical grieving space and so began my journey to translate this beautiful story to screen." is a 2020 Japanese
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...
about a fictional high school student who lost her family in the Tōhoku tsunami and returns to her hometown to visit the wind phone years later. Director
Nobuhiro Suwa is a Japanese film director working in Japan and France. His directorial works and screenplays often make use of improvisation techniques. Currently, Suwa is the President of Tokyo Zokei University. Biography Having graduated from Hiroshim ...
, who returned to Japan for filming, stated: "Going there eight years later, you can't see much of the damage, it has been rebuilt. But people's feelings have not been fixed."


References

{{reflist 2010 establishments in Japan 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami Buildings and structures in Iwate Prefecture Burial monuments and structures Communication with dead people Ōtsuchi, Iwate