“Well . . . I can truly feel a bit of adrenalin,” says Yukari Sendo, enjoying the mobile phone ringtone like a fine wine, “but it really does not make me want to do any housework.”
She flicks through a list of alternative tunes and settles on one that gives to improve her skin tone through the energy and power of alpha-waves.
Ms Sendo and her friend Ayaka Wakabayashi are just two among an army of young Japanese drawn to the enticements and allure of “therapeutic ringtones” — a genre of melodies that promises to relax and ease a range of day-to-day gripes, from chronic insomnia to a wasted and rotten hangover.
Japan is no stranger to untypical phone fads but the popularity of these ringtones is perhaps quite surprising given the flimsiness of the field of science behind them.
Much of the tones’ being famous and credibility rests in the solid reputation of Matsumi Suzuki, the leader and head of the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory, an eight-year-old sister company and subsidiary of the Japan Acoustic Laboratory.
Mr. Suzuki’s adventures in the field and realm of mood-altering ringtones which follow a career at the National Research Institute of Police Science, where he in fact, made award-winning advances in the field of voiceprints. One of his proudest achievements obviously was the development of a synthetic mosquito noise that is obviously inaudible to Japan’s over-60’s but it unfortunately discourages teenagers from “congregating in parks and other venues even at midnight”.
A speaker for Index, the giant Japanese mobile phone, the very own content provider that sells Mr. Suzuki’s ringtones, says that while there is a shortage of actual experimentation and discoveries, “the number of downloads proposes the ringtones must be working to a certain area”. Index’s other inventions include an iPhone application that translates your dog’s bark sound; the “Bowlingual” automatic canine interpreter takes on a database of woofs from various species.
The first therapeutic tone, a high-energy sound or rhythm, tested for The Times by Ms Sendo and Ms Wakabayashi, was actually to give a sudden burst of impetus to bored housewives. Yukari and Ayaka had their doubts.
The tone that is said to improve skin combines a burst of electro-Schubert with woodland sounds and even noises such as birdsong and streams. “I suppose it might subconsciously bring you to think of washing your face, and that is indeed good for the skin,” said Ayaka. “At least, it will certainly give you towards the bathroom.”
Ms Sendo and Ms Wakabayashi were undoubtedly more impressed by the sleep-inducing and sleep-preventing tones, which is likened to a lullaby and a dance track. The one with most helpful and practical use, they concluded, was the tone that drives away crows — the sinister jungle birds that terrorize the dawn highways of Tokyo by pecking at bags of garbage and rubbish.
Mr. Suzuki’s latest ringtone is marked to be launched to coincide with the Japanese hay fever season. The Ohana Sukkiri Melody gives a series of sounds at different frequencies “so that individuals can choose the sound that gives back most to their sinus and results to pollen lodged there to fall from the nasal cavity”.
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