Self-expression is existence

Self-expression as Existence names a central claim of The Reason I Jump: communication is not merely a way to transmit information but a means of making an inner life socially present. The book traces that claim through Naoki Higashida’s movement from inaccessible speech to writing and the alphabet grid, and through his appeal for others to interpret autistic behavior with patience rather than judgment. Expression does not erase difficulty; it makes connection, recognition, and hope possible within it.

Communication and the means to speak

Naoki describes speech as an unreliable channel, not a measure of whether a person has thoughts or feelings to share. He says that people with autism may struggle to speak properly and may be unable to express what they intend. In his account, this difficulty can leave them exposed to misunderstanding: others see behavior from the outside, while the person cannot readily explain what is happening within. The distinction between being unable to speak and choosing not to speak is therefore decisive. Treating silence as refusal mistakes a barrier to expression for a lack of willingness or inner life.

Writing offers another route. Naoki credits training with Ms Suzuki at Hagukumi School and support from his mother with helping him learn to communicate through writing; he can also write on a computer. He describes the Alphabet grid as non-vocal communication, a way to express himself without relying on the vocal nervous system. What first seemed impossible became a means of sharing thoughts and feelings. The change is not simply from one tool to another: it opens a channel through which an otherwise obscured self can reach other people.

The practical form of the grid matters to that change. Rather than writing each letter by hand, Naoki can point to letters to form words, anchoring words that might otherwise disappear when he tries to speak. His mother devised the grid to make communication more independent. The device is therefore both modest and consequential: a set of letters gives shape to language and helps hold an intended message steady long enough to be conveyed.

Expression as agency and existence

Naoki describes the work of learning written communication as difficult. Even after he began, he often felt beaten while learning to use the grid, and reaching the point where he could indicate letters independently took persistence. He explains what sustained that effort: expressing himself mattered more than anything else to living as a human being. The grid’s importance lies not in sentence-making alone but in enabling him to tell other people what he wants and needs them to understand.

That emphasis becomes stark when Naoki recalls feeling abandoned because he lacked control over his body and could not explain himself. Staying still or moving when told could both be difficult; from the outside, such actions might invite correction, while the person could remain unable to make the reason understood. He describes a past fear that the non-speaking version of himself should never have been born. Beginning text communication, and then using the Alphabet grid and a computer, changed his relation to that fear: sharing his thoughts helped him understand that he, too, existed in the world as a human being.

The claim is thus relational as well as personal. Expression makes an interior life available to others, but it also lets the person recognize that life as communicable and real. Naoki’s hope is to explain, in his own way, what may be happening in the minds of autistic people, including those who lack a means to express themselves and whose parents may not know what they are thinking. He presents his writing as an invitation to become a better friend, not as a substitute for listening to an individual.

Reading behavior without assuming intention

The book gives concrete reasons why expression cannot be judged only by conventional conversation. Naoki says that he may repeat a familiar question even though he understands it: he can quickly forget what he has just heard, and the repeated exchange can also let him play with words and their sound and rhythm. Repetition, in this account, may involve memory and pleasure rather than simple failure to understand. The explanation asks readers to distinguish the visible act from the intention or experience that may lie behind it.

A child’s repeated phrase can likewise be intelligible within a context that an observer has missed. Naoki explains that an autistic girl’s words, “all of us,” came from a teacher’s earlier statement that the class would go to the park the next day. The girl was trying to find out when they were going, using the words available to her. Without that background, listeners might invent a different purpose for the phrase. The example shows how limited access to a person’s intended meaning can turn a communicative attempt into a puzzle for everyone around them.

Access also depends on the listener. Naoki says it can be difficult to recognize from someone’s voice alone that they are present and speaking to an autistic person, and recommends using the person’s name first to get their attention. This shifts part of the communicative responsibility away from the autistic speaker: understanding is not secured by demanding an immediate, conventional response, but can depend on how the other person begins the exchange and makes attention possible.

The same attention to lived experience applies to sensory distress. Naoki explains that some sounds create fear not simply because they grate on the nerves, but because continued listening can make a person feel they are losing their sense of where they are. Cupping the ears can then be a way to protect oneself and regain a grip on one’s surroundings. Since the sounds that trouble people differ, the account resists treating one explanation as universal. It asks observers to take the behavior seriously as a response to an experience they may not share.

Situated testimony and its limits

The book presents Naoki’s account as unusually valuable partly because autistic people may not have a reliable way to communicate what they are thinking. In the translator’s introduction, The Reason I Jump is described as answering questions that had been urgent to a parent trying to understand a young child’s behavior. Naoki’s explanations offered a view of autistic experience from someone whose own communication was profoundly difficult. Their force comes from making testimony available where an observer’s theories and guesses had left a gap.

At the same time, the book does not make one account a rule for every autistic person. The introduction explicitly emphasizes variation, comparing autism to individual retina patterns rather than measles, and cautions that an approach helpful for one child may not help another. Naoki also marks some interpretations as his own made-up theory. Those qualifications matter: taking his account seriously means hearing the particularity of what he says, not converting it into a universal clinical description.

Naoki acknowledges that obstacles can be mistaken for selfishness or ego, and argues that understanding this distinction offers hope. His appeal is not that every difficulty will disappear once explained, but that a more accurate interpretation can change how people respond. When others recognize that an autistic person may be struggling to express an intention, they can make room for communication rather than treating outward behavior as a complete account of the person.

Hope and a shared future

The afterword links understanding to the possibility of continuing through an arduous life. Naoki recalls that as a child he worried that, if his autism could never be cured, he would never live properly as a human being. The repeated need to apologize for things he could not do as others did drained his hope. Against that history, his explanations are offered as a way for readers to see that obstacles do not necessarily arise from selfishness or ego, and that being understood can restore a measure of possibility.

His concluding hope extends beyond individual recognition. If readers grasp the distinction between difficulty and selfish intent, he says, an autistic person is given a ray of hope; however hard or sad life may be, hope can make persistence possible. He wants that light to connect autistic people’s future with the future of those who read his words. Self-expression is therefore neither a private accomplishment nor a cure: it is the means by which a person can be heard, understood without being reduced to appearances, and included in a future held in common.