As a child I used to read a Japanese mythology-inspired book, The Dream Eater, but this is entirely something else:
[Takara's] Yumemi Koubou works by first relaxing you; lulling you to sleep with soft background music, mood lights, and a "pleasing" fragrance. Once the mood has been set, it's your turn to respond. To solidify the dream content, according to Takara, you need to record one simple, concise summary phrase with the built-in recorder. Make it a good one - this phrase will be repeated throughout the night quietly while you're sleeping.With knowledge of a standard eight-hour sleep schedule, the device activates periodically during your REM sleep cycles, giving gentle reminders of the desired dream content (in other words, more music, fragrance, and replaying your recorded phrase).
In a written statement, a representative from Takara states, "… this product is designed to help people shape their dreams in sleep, combining multi-sensory stimulus and sophisticated sleep-dream research to create an environment conducive to having a specific dream desired by the user."
A repeated phrase, eh? If this were scientifically sound, the phrase could be theraputic - or used for indoctrination. That reminds me of an old instructional tape used to maximum ironic effect on MTV's early 1990s Liquid Television: "You love to bowl. You love to bowl. You love..." The Yumemi Koubou's worth at least half a gander, especially since Takara are the same people who brought us the Bow-Lingual dog translator.