The Reason I Jump

Higashida was diagnosed with severe autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when he was five years old and has limited verbal communication skills.[4] With help from his mother, he is purported to have written the book using a method he calls "facilitated finger writing", also known as facilitated communication (FC).[4][5] The method has been discredited as pseudoscience by organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association (APA). Some researchers are skeptical of the authenticity of Higashida's writings,[4] though no concrete evidence has been made public.

Yoshida and Mitchell, who have a child with autism, wrote the introduction to the English-language version.[6] The majority of the memoir is told through 58 questions Higashida and many other people dealing with autism are commonly asked, as well as interspersed sections of short prose. These sections are either memories Higashida shares or parabolic stories that relate to the themes discussed throughout the memoir. The collections ends with Higashida's short story, "I'm Right Here", which the author prefaces by saying:

I wrote this story in the hope that it will help you to understand how painful it is when you can't express yourself to the people you love. If this story connects with your heart in some way, then I believe you'll be able to connect back to the hearts of people with autism too.[7]

While the book quickly became successful in Japan, it was not until after the English translation that it reached mainstream audiences across the world. On its publication in July 2013 in the UK, it was serialised on BBC Radio 4 as 'Book of the Week' and went straight to Number 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list. After its publication in the US (August 2013) it was featured on The Daily Show in an interview between Jon Stewart and David Mitchell[8] and the following day it became #1 on Amazon's bestseller list. In the interview Stewart describes the memoir as "one of the most remarkable books I've read." Other celebrities also offer their support, such as Whoopi Goldberg in her gift guide section in People's 2013 holiday issue. In addition to traditional media outlets, the book received attention from autism advocacy groups across the globe, with many, such as Autism Speaks, conducting interviews with Mitchell.[9]

The Reason I Jump was named a best book of 2013 by NPR.[10]

Michael Fitzpatrick, a medical writer known for writing about controversies in autism from the perspective of someone who is both a physician and a parent of a child with autism, said some skepticism of how much Higashida contributed to the book was justified because of the "scant explanation" of the process Higashida's mother used for helping him write using the character grid and expressed concern that the book "reinforces more myths than it challenges".[11] According to Fitzpatrick, The Reason I Jump is full of "moralising" and "platitudes" that sound like the views of a middle-aged parent of a child with autism.[11]

Like Mitchell, like other parents, I have spent much time pondering what is going on in the mind of my autistic son. But I have come around to agreeing with the pioneering Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger that 'the autist is only himself' – there is nobody trapped inside, no time traveller offering redemption to humanity...I believe that my son enjoys swimming pools because he likes water, not because, in the fanciful speculations of Higashida, he is yearning for a 'distant, distant watery past' and that he wants to return to a 'primeval era' in which 'aquatic lifeforms came into being and evolved'.

— Michael Fitzpatrick, Spiked, August 29, 2013[11]

A September 2013 review in Publishers Weekly stated: "Higashida often achieves a clarity and wisdom that is surprising for such a young person, like when he suggests that autism should be viewed as simply another personality type. Other times the reader is reminded of his age, when he earnestly pleads on behalf of himself and others with autism for understanding and patience."[12]

Sallie Tisdale, writing for The New York Times, said the book, "may raise questions, as many books have, about the nature of autism," but also about the process of translating the work into English. Translation, she wrote, "is a dance between an objective search for equivalent language and an intuitive grasp of the author’s intent, which may have nothing to do with the translator’s point of view."[13]

In her 2014 review of the book for the journal Cerebrum, professor and author Temple Grandin wrote, "I was confident that Naoki, a 13-year-old nonverbal child with autism, was not using the controversial method of facilitated communication, in which a person supports the wrist of the nonverbal person with autism. When this method is used, the facilitator is often the true author. Naoki’s book belongs to the other class of writings: those that come from nonverbal individuals with autism who can communicate fully independently with no wrist support."[14]

Psychologist Jens Hellman was suspicious that Higashida's parents may have interfered with the text, saying that the accounts "resemble what I would deem very close to an autistic child’s parents’ dream."[15]

Cover of the book
Author	Naoki Higashida
Translator	Keiko Yoshida, David Mitchell
Language	English
Subject	Autism
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	2015
Published in English	2017
Pages	240[38]
ISBN	978-0-8129-9739-2 (Hardcover)
Preceded by	The Reason I Jump

Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism is a follow-up to The Reason I Jump, written in 2015 and credited to Japanese author Naoki Higashida when he was between the ages of 18 and 22.[39] Higashida has severe autism and his verbal communication skills are limited.[40][38] However, he is able to communicate by pointing at letters on an alphabet chart.[41][42][43] Skeptics have claimed that there is no proof that Higashida can communicate independently, and that the English translation represents the ideals of author David Mitchell and Keiko Yoshida. In response, Mitchell claims that there is video evidence showing that Higashida can type independently.[15][42][44][45]

The book is a collection of short chapters arranged in eight sections in which Higashida explores identity, family relationships, education, society, and his personal growth.[38][41] The title comes from a Japanese proverb, 七転び八起き, which literally translates as "Fall seven times and stand up eight".

The English translation by Keiko Yoshida and her husband, author David Mitchell, was released on July 11, 2017.[46][42][47]

Films

• Annie's Coming Out
• Autism Is a World
• Deej

• The Reason I Jump at IMDb
• The Reason I Jump on Goodreads
• The Reason I Jump, Vulcan Productions
• Naoki Higashida page at Penguin Random House