The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

The Reason I Jump is a 2007 nonfiction biography written by Japanese teenager Naoki Higashida. In it, Higashida answers a range of questions about his nonspeaking autism, as well as exploring the topic through various asides and short stories. Higashida looks at why some people with autism struggle with verbal communication, something he attributes to a “gap” between thought and expression. He addresses the problems some people with autism face with nonspeaking communication and bodily movement. Higashida suggests that this is due to an alienation they experience from their own bodies. Finally, Higashida explores whether he would want to be “normal” and why some people with autism often run away. He argues that the last trait is because of a continual unease they feel in the world and says, regarding the first question, that he would not want to become “normal” as autism is now so closely tied to his identity.

This guide uses the 2013 edition of the text, translated by KA Yoshida and David Mitchell and published by Sceptre. This edition includes a 2013 introduction by David Mitchell.

Summary

The Reason I Jump is divided into a Preface and 58 short chapters based on the author’s answers to questions about autism. Interspersed between these answers are seven additional chapters composed of observations about autism or short stories and the story “I’m Right Here.” This guide contains six analysis sections, the first five of which correspond to 13 chapters each in the text and the last to “I’m Right Here.” In the Preface, Questions 1-11, and “The Mystery of the Missing Words,” Higashida explains why he wrote this book. He did so to facilitate a deeper understanding of people with autism, who are often misunderstood due to their communication problems. Higashida then explores why some people with autism struggle with communication. The reason for this is due to problems they have in externalizing their thoughts and feelings in speech. Higashida attributes these difficulties to a temporal “gap” that people with autism experience between thought and verbal expression. In Chapters 12-23 and in “Slip Sliding Away,” Higashida explores the relationship between autism and the body. This is in terms of physical control, sensation, and movement. In the story “Slip Sliding Away,” a hare and tortoise have a race in which the tortoise falls on his back and the hare races away only to find nobody waiting at the finish. The story is an allegory about the difficulties some people with autism face in controlling their bodies and the isolation this can bring. Higashida, relatedly, looks at why some people with autism do not like physical contact, have limited facial expressions, and have difficulty imitating movement. He attributes many of these problems to some people with autism’s alienation from their bodies and their lack of intuitive control over them.

In Questions 24-35 and in “Earthling and Autisman,” Higashida addresses the question of whether he would like to be “normal.” He looks at different ways in which autism is challenging and says that, for a long time, these things made him long to be normal. For example, he feels trapped in his body, and many sensations and memories can provoke intense negative emotions. However, Higashida says, despite these difficulties, he has come to feel that he would rather remain autistic since this is now so closely bound to his identity.

In Questions 36-47, “Never-Ending Summer,” and “A Story I Heard Somewhere,” Higashida explores several ostensibly strange autistic behaviors and traits. These include the love of spinning, the desire to order objects, and the obsession with timetables. Such behaviors, suggests Higashida, stem from a desire to control a frighteningly unpredictable world. However, Higashida also suggests that the desire for repetition and order constitutes a positive source of pleasure for some people with autism. “A Story I Heard Somewhere,” about a woman who dances straight for seven days, is about such joy.

In Questions 48-58, “The Great Statue of Buddha,” and “The Black Crow and the White Dove,” Higashida looks at why some people with autism are continually running away and getting lost. Part of the reason for this, argues Higashida, is a non-rational compulsion they feel to follow certain paths or phenomenon that come into view. However, Higashida also suggests that the compulsion to run away is linked to a general sense of unease with the world and a desire to escape from this. “The Black Crow and the White Dove” is a metaphor for how the unease felt by some people with autism can show people without autism how to be more accepting of their own feelings of rootlessness. “I’m Right Here” tells the story of a boy called Shun who notices one day that everyone is looking straight through him. Shun learns from an old man that this is because he is dead, having been killed earlier by a car. Shun goes to heaven, but on returning to earth as a ghost, he sees that his parents are still in pain over his death. Asking for God’s help, God says that Shun can be reborn to his parents, though at the cost of erasing his memories and identity. Shun is unsure about this offer but agrees to it when he later sees that his mother is in the hospital and dying of grief. A year later, a new child, Nozomi, is born to his mother. The story finishes with the four-year-old Nozomi, who knows she had a brother who died, running to some cherry trees and wondering what Shun was like.