Sasaki found his wind phone in the wreckage. He rebuilt it and opened it to his neighbors. As word spread, more and more people from around Japan came to his garden to speak to their lost loved ones.
According to an interview from 2021, Sasaki estimates that over 35,000 people from the U.S., Germany, Australia, and beyond have used the phone.
The practice is similar to other grief coping methods, such as Gestalt therapy, which might include letting a patient speak to an empty chair while imagining their deceased loved one sitting there.
Another approach is to write a letter to the deceased and read it out loud.
The wind phone and these techniques share the use of a conversational approach. In this way, the grieving can maintain their connection with the deceased, reflect, and release strong emotions safely.
Using a wind phone can elicit both positive and negative feelings. Either way, it’s good to let them out to relieve all the tension in the body.
No official research has been conducted on the effectiveness of wind phones in helping people deal with grief, but the rapid spread of wind phones over the past years suggests that one-way calls at least provide some comfort.
