On March 11, 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sendai, Japan, sent a catastrophic tsunami crashing into the island. Waves towering 40 meters high ripped across the region, killing 15,500 people and destroying the homes of more than 450,000. When the tsunami reached the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, it caused three nuclear reactors to melt down and spewed radioactive materials into the environment, layering disaster atop of disaster.
Garden designer Itaru Sasaki lost his cousin to cancer just months before the tragedy devastated his town, the small fishing village of Otsuchi. In an attempt to wrangle his grief, he decided to create a space for mourning in his backyard, one that would offer quiet and a symbolic connection to his loved one.
Sasaki’s “Phone of the Wind” in Otsuchi, Japan
Set in a lush garden is a small, glass-paned booth with a seat and built-in desk holding a notebook, pen, and black rotary phone. The vintage device isn’t tethered to any service line, a severing that provides the space its name: Kaze no denwa, or the “Phone of the Wind,” a nod to the idea that whatever is spoken into the receivers will be carried only through the air.
Given its location in a place indelibly impacted by mass casualty, Sasaki’s booth quickly became a useful intervention for mourning families—Otsuchi lost about 10 percent of its population in the disaster, a third of whose bodies have never been identified or found. The designer eventually opened the space to visitors, and in a short time, tens of thousands of people began making the pilgrimage to his garden.
Sasaki told Tessa Fontaine writing for The Believer in 2018:
Life is only, at most, 100 years. But death is something that goes on much longer, both for the person who has died and also for the survivors, who must find a way to feel connected to the dead. Death does not end the life. All the people who are left afterward are still figuring out what to do about it. They need a way to feel connected.
In other words, the “Phone of the Wind” is a physical acknowledgment that grief endures, that life never really returns to “normal” after loss.
Palm Harbor, Florida
In early 2020, Amy Dawson’s daughter Emily died following a long illness. As she dealt with her own loss and studied to become a grief coach, Dawson discovered Sasaki’s “Phone of the Wind.” She felt an affinity with the idea and through additional research, quickly found similar projects in the U.S.
“I believe very much that the people that go ahead of us are still around us, and their energy doesn’t disappear,” Dawson tells us one morning over Zoom, echoing Sasaki. This sentiment, atypical for U.S. and other Western audiences, is common in many cultures. Think of Mexico’s Día de Muertos, an autumn holiday described as a family reunion between the living and the dead. The Buddhist Obon festival in Japan is similar and summons visits from ancestors.
For many Americans, though, bereavement is allotted a handful of days off of work, followed by a painful and often isolating period of grief relegated to the shadows. Death is often taboo.
Dawson continually strives to remedy this social stigma and as part of her work, began cataloging the phone booths and their locations, which she eventually compiled into a vast directory called My Wind Phone. Containing photos and stories from the creators, the searchable map tracks more than 300 “Wind Phones” around the globe, each individually installed and maintained.
That Dawson lives in the U.S. is no doubt a contributor to the popularity of My Wind Phone in the States, although the abundance of designs also points to a profound reality: people are hungry for space to process their heartbreak and for greater recognition that mourning doesn’t end with a funeral or once cleanup from a natural disaster is finished.
“I get a ton of communication from people who are feeling or feel like they can take the next step forward because they feel like they can make a phone call say what they need to say,” Dawson shares. “Some make a phone call once. Some people go back weekly.”
Encounters with “Wind Phones” in the wild are sometimes intentional and others a welcome surprise. “I stumbled upon the ‘Wind Phone’ and felt a bit crazy dialing my mom until I didn’t, and I got to tell her I love her,” a woman named Marlene shared with Dawson. “I haven’t felt connected to her since she died in 2016 like I did today.”
Another note from Paul D. is similar: “I think the ‘Wind Phones’ that are showing up in the world are teaching us all that it’s okay to grieve and that pain and loss are real. I’ve never ‘gotten over’ or ‘moved on’ from my mother’s loss, and I know now that’s okay. I’ll keep calling her until the day I die.”
In the decade since Sasaki created the “Phone of the Wind,” the project has turned into a movement with broad cultural implications. In 2019, writer and director Kristen Gerweck released a highly lauded short film fictionalizing a story about seven strangers connected by a cliff-side phone. Saski himself wrote a now out-of-print book about the experience, which also inspired at least two novels from North American writers.
Beyond networks like Dawson’s, the movement is largely decentralized: anyone with space and the desire can create a “Wind Phone.” This means that designs, locations, and accessibility vary widely, and no one is quite sure who created the second or third phone or exactly how the designs have multiplied so rapidly.
Painted rocks outside the Evanston “Wind Phone.” Photo by Christopher Jobson
Several—from one in Evanston, Illinois, to another in Langley, British Columbia, and another in Amsterdam—utilize the iconic British booth painted in bright red. Others are humble wooden boxes affixed to trees and benches, or a single phone nested into a rock as in the island village of Rhoscolyn, Wales. “Wind Phones” take different shapes and forms for different people, similar to the grief they help soothe.
As the project grows and we collectively destigmatize loss, Dawson hopes people remember that loss is broad, and death isn’t the only reason someone might be experiencing sorrow. “You lose a job, a relationship, your house gets foreclosed on, whatever you can think of, all the millions of ways that people grieve,” she adds. “People are going to ‘Wind Phones’ for more than just death, and that’s really important.”
Visit My Wind Phone to find one in your area.
Mayfield Green, Kansas
Silverton, Colorado
Ellensburg, Washington
Capponili PL, Italy
Alberta, Canada
Levack, Ontario
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article For the Grieving, the Global ‘Wind Phone’ Movement Is a Lifeline appeared first on Colossal.
