The Phone Connected to the Wind

In a white booth, in the middle of a garden, Kazuyoshi Sasaki, 67, bends down and picks up the handset.

He dials his wife Miwako's cellphone number.

No one will answer. The phone is not connected to any network. It is called "the phone of the wind."

Kazuyoshi talks to her anyway. He tells her he had sent her a message saying where he was. She never read it.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan. Nearly 20,000 people died. Miwako was swept away.

For days, Kazuyoshi searched for her, from one evacuation centre to the next. At night, he went back to the rubble of their home.

The booth stands in Ōtsuchi, about 500 kilometres northeast of Tokyo. In that town, 1,285 people died or went missing, about one in ten.

It belongs to Itaru Sasaki, a garden designer. He began building it in November 2010, after his cousin died of cancer. He finished it shortly after the tsunami.

Then he opened his garden to everyone. In his view, many people were not able to say goodbye.

By 2017, at least 25,000 people had come. They arrive from all over Japan.

Sachiko Okawa, 76, calls her husband Toichiro there. They were married for 44 years. The tsunami swept him away. She admits she feels lonely. Talking in the booth, she says, makes her feel a little better.

She often brings her two grandsons. They talk to their grandfather too.

Our phones connect us to everyone, all the time. This one is connected to nothing. And yet it carries what matters most.

Other wind phones have since appeared elsewhere. On May 28, 2026, a wind phone was unveiled in Stayner, Ontario, at the Clearview EcoPark. The Hospice Georgian Triangle Foundation installed it with the township, to help visitors through their grief.

At the end of his call, Kazuyoshi Sasaki tells his wife:

The bond with those we love does not end at the end of the line. Sometimes we just need a place, and time, to say it out loud.