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

A boy named Shun, who thought that he knew himself well, suddenly starts noticing while walking the streets that people are staring at his face in a cold, indifferent way. On coming out of a supermarket, an old man also approaches him and asks, “What are you doing here?” (155). When Shun gets home, his mother is preparing supper, and he tries to speak to her. However, she looks past him as well, and Shun runs outside in a state of anguish. Shun then finds himself in a park in the evening but, despite his best efforts, cannot remember how he got there. Shun walks home but finds his house is in total darkness. He waits for his parents, yet when they return, they do not seem to notice him, even when he grabs his mother’s arm. Shun sees the old man from outside of the supermarket again, who tells him, “You don’t belong to this world anymore” (159). The old man explains to Shun that Shun died when he was hit by a car that skipped a red light. This news causes Shun to start crying.

The old man suggests that they should “go back” (159), by which he means to heaven, and they walk westward to find the path to get there. Shun becomes tired on the walk to heaven and collapses. When Shun wakes up from a dreamless sleep, he notices “an ancient man in white robes” standing before him (162), whom he realizes is God. He also notices that he has no body and starts to panic. God tells him to relax, and when Shun asks about heaven, God says that he can do anything he likes there, although he adds that Shun still probably has unfinished business on earth that he would like to reflect on. God then vanishes, and Shun wonders how one is supposed to live when one is dead, especially alone and without a body.

After this, Shun feels himself hurtling back down to earth at incredible speed, and he is back in his old house. He sees his mother, and he can sense that she feels his presence in the room. He hears Shun’s mother tell his father about this, who says that Shun is “always with us” (165), and he realizes that he has become a ghost to them. Returning to heaven, Shun feels alone but is greeted by a boy called Kazuo who explains to him that he can talk to anyone he likes in heaven, and they have perfect freedom there. Over time, Shun then begins to acclimatize to life in heaven, making many friends and visiting “every corner of the Earth” (167).

One time, though, returning to visit his parents, Shun notices that his mother is still upset over his death. While looking at a photograph of Shun, she says, “I don’t think I can go on living like this” (167). Returning to heaven again, and in desperation, Shun asks for God’s help, as he cannot bear the idea of his parents continuing to be in pain over his death. As such, God offers him a deal: He can return Shun to his parents, but it will be as a new baby without Shun’s personality or any of Shun’s memories, and he “won’t be Shun any longer” (169). Shun spends a long time considering God’s offer and comes to think that it would be better not to return as his parents would eventually see him anyway.

However, some months later, a year after he died, Shun returns home to find that his mother is in the hospital and is very sick, dying of grief over Shun. As such, to save his mother’s life, Shun decides to be reborn to her as a new child. In the hospital that day, Shun’s mother tells his father that she has seen Shun in a dream telling her not to grieve anymore. This leads his parents to resolve to make a fresh start.

A year after Shun’s decision, a new baby is born to his parents, “Nozomi,” meaning “hope.” Four years later, as Nozomi is about to start kindergarten, she bumps into the old man from the beginning of the story outside a shop. The old man recognizes her as Shun and tells Nozomi he is an angel. He also asks her if she has had a contented life, to which she responds “yes.” At the end of “I’m Right Here,” Nozomi buys a chocolate bar for Shun, whom she knows about and who is watching over them. She then runs toward some cherry trees and reflects, “The things my brother used to like are the same things that I like” (175), before wondering what sort of a person he was.

In his Afterword to The Reason I Jump, Higashida says that he grew up questioning whether he would ever be able to live fully as a human being. For, he explains, there are so many things he struggles to do. However, he says, he hopes that by reading his book, the reader becomes aware that the challenges he faces do not stem from selfishness or egotism. If people can understand this point, then he and other people with autism can be given some hope for themselves and for the future.