Dream Anything You Like with the Fantasy Machine!

Perchance to dream - anything you like with the fantasy machine
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
January 15, 2004
The Guardian and CTV.com

Entering an exam hall totally unprepared or walking the streets naked may soon become nightmares of the past. Takara, Japan's second biggest toy producer said yesterday that it had developed a gadget enabling people to turn fanciful daydreams into realistic night-time experiences.

Before hitting the futon, all the owners of Yumemi Kobo, or Dream Workshop (literally ?'craft shop of dream'), have to do is stare at a photograph of what they would like to dream about and then record, in their own words, how the dream is supposed to pan out. Small enough to sit on a bedside table, the inventors say it works by helping to control one's subconscious mind. But some psychoanalysts are skeptical. Once users are in the land of nod, the message is automatically replayed at the moment when people are most likely to dream, during the so-called rapid eye movement (REM)-a sign that someone is dreaming- phase of sleep. The voice message, along with lights, music, and special scents, are supposed to direct the mind. Eight hours later, users are gently awakened by soft lighting and music to ensure that pleasant memories of the night before are not instantly erased. But Takara, the company which plans to start distributing the gadget in the spring, warns it cannot guarantee complete customer satisfaction. "We are still experimenting, mainly with company employees," Takara marketing executive Kenji Hattori told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. "Some said the theme was right, but the storyline was wrong. And some said the noise woke them up. But it has worked for quite a number of people."

At 14,800 yen (£75), the dream machine is not cheap, but then what price the holiday of a lifetime, dinner with the ideal man or woman, or your team winning the World Cup? The president of Takara says the prolonged recession in Japan inspired him to make his company's mission to let people experience their ideal dream.

How we dream and why we do has long been studied. Aristotle in 300 B.C believed dreams are formed by our subconscious. Sigmund Freud hypothesized they represent repressed inner desires. (In the book of Job it is written: "For God speaks in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction.")

Whether dreams can be controlled is a debate still going on today. Dream analyst Layne Dalfen believes it's possible, saying psychotherapists have helped children overcome nightmares by thinking good thoughts before bed. "A machine like this should jump-start or kick-start the process they're just kind of helping you in a more visual way," Dalfen says. But those who study sleep say dreams can only be influenced so much. "We might change the surface of the dream, but the deeper issues and concerns expressed in the dream is something we can't really change," says Dr. Allan Blackman of the University of Toronto.

As well as conventional toys such as action figures, dolls and miniature cars - Takara, Japan's second-biggest toymaker - is behind several bizarre gadgets which it calls "life toys". They include Bowlingual, a device that apparently can translate the barks, whines and yelps of more than 80 breeds of dog into human language, and Meowlingual, which performs a similar service for cat lovers. Time magazine voted Bowlingual one of the best inventions of 2002. The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, presented a pair of English-language Bowlingual gadgets to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, during anniversary celebrations in St Petersburg in May.