★★★ Recommended by Kim Do-hyun, Ha Eun-bin, and Moon Young-min ★★★
“A multidisciplinary and reflective self-report on rehabilitation by a person with a disability.”
“I hope you will open this book not to know or understand, but to touch and be touched.”
“A book that opens up new possibilities for thinking about the relationship between disability and the world.”

A person with cerebral palsy and a person in the field of research
Representative researcher Shinichiro Kumagaya
A fierce study of non-normative movements, relationships, sexuality, independence, and life.

After 'rehabilitation nights' where 'normal' body movements were forced,
I was struggling to figure out how to interact with the world with my damaged body.
A sensual and captivating autobiographical story

A record of Shinichiro Kumagaya, a pediatrician, life scientist, and person with congenital spastic cerebral palsy, reflecting on his experiences with rehabilitation treatment through adolescence and his subsequent independent living, exploring the body and disability, norms and sexuality, independence and life in an interdisciplinary and reflective manner.
A book that poses fundamental questions about disability and independence from a multidisciplinary perspective, including disability studies, sociology, medicine, and engineering.
This is the first autobiographical essay by Shinichiro Kumagaya, who wrote the famous sentence, “Independence is not the absence of dependence, but the state of being able to choose to depend.” It won the 9th Shincho Documentary Award and has had a significant influence on the Japanese party movement and research in which people with disabilities and illnesses take the lead.

I went to rehab every day from when I was very young until I was eighteen.
Until the lower grades of elementary school, the routine was usually to divide the rehabilitation into three sessions per day for one hour each.
Once a month, I went to the welfare center and school for the disabled in the neighboring town to receive observation and guidance from experts.
And when summer vacation came, I headed across the sea to a facility in the mountains to participate in a rehabilitation camp.

--- p.18

When I arrive at the rehabilitation facility, my body is lifted from the wheelchair and placed on a cold floor covered with a short, woolen mat.
Without the wheelchair that came between me and the world, connecting and mediating various objects with me, my body is limited to relating to the limited scope of the floor and objects within a few centimeters of the floor.
The bookshelf or desk that was previously in contact with the wall is now much higher than your head.
It is similar to the ceiling in that you can only look at it because you can't reach it.
I feel like I'm back in the 'two-dimensional world' again.
In that state, the only thing that picks up my movements is the floor.
I'm going to be spending most of the next week with this floor.
It will move slowly in a crawling manner, like crawling on its stomach, feeling the temperature, friction, moisture, and smell of the floor.
The floor will accept this strange movement of mine and transform it into a form of 'movement'.
My movement is not a meaningless exercise that cuts through the air, but is given meaning by the floor.
This floor is the only thing that gives meaning to my movements.

--- p.20~21

I know well the world beyond the fall.
That is the world I used to be in.
I started using a wheelchair when I was around thirteen.
Until then, I had been moving around in two dimensions on the floor like an attached organism.
Fall back into the two-dimensional world.
Even now, having barely touched the three-dimensional world, there are still doors in my life that open wide like traps, leading to the two-dimensional world.
(…) But at the same time, the two-dimensional world is also a place I miss.
I have known this world for a long time.
I know how to live in this world.
Just leave me on the floor.
The floor is big and strong and holds me tightly.
It's okay to sleep soundly like a child, and it's okay to play and indulge in your favorite fantasies.
A sense of relief builds at returning to a familiar place from the past.
So falling to the floor is like a time slip for me, going back in time.

--- p.30~31

But why is my body so prone to falling? And why does just falling send me into a two-dimensional world? These questions might sound like strange, playful questions.
“Why? Since your body has a disability called cerebral palsy, wouldn’t it be natural for you to be incapacitated?” I think I might hear a retort like this, seemingly incredulous.
But I don't want such a superficial explanation.
Describing my experience using words like "cerebral palsy" or "disability" might make others feel like they know what I'm talking about, but it doesn't convey the essence of what I experienced.
I need words that can more vividly and clearly reproduce what I have experienced.
And in this book, I want to write an explanation that will allow the reader to vaguely relate to my experiences of falling and still falling.
So, I want to drag you, the readers, along and fall together.

--- p.31~32

When we feel the sensation of 'my body moving', it is not because we receive feedback information from the body that actually moved.
Regardless of whether or not the movement actually occurred, the result of the movement simulation performed by the 'internal model' in the posterior parietal lobe is mistaken for the actual movement (this illusion is called 'false proprioception').
In this way, there exists an 'image' in the brain that projects the body and the external world.
This is called the 'internal model'.
Whether or not we actually move, our consciousness experiences our own intentions, movements, and changes in the world within a virtual reality created by computations of our internal models.

--- p.42

In this way, from a young age, I internalized an image of 'normal movement' that I could not perform on my own.
There is naturally a gap between the image of 'normal movement' produced in this way and the actual movement of my body.
Because of the desire of those around me to fill this gap, I had to undergo rehabilitation for over a decade since I was young to be able to perform 'non-disabled movements'.

--- p.69

The trainer's movements are performed completely independently of my movements, and the trainer cannot pick up the signals of fear or pain emanating from my body.
The trainer is an uncompromising hitter, a powerful hitter who wields power over my body.
Soon, my body succumbs to the trainer's power, as if losing territory to the enemy.
My arms, legs, and waist all gave way to the trainer's strength one by one, and I lost all tension.
However, this process does not have the same pleasure as the folding knife phenomenon.
Rather, it feels like I'm taking my arms, legs, and waist off my body and handing them over to a trainer.

--- p.87

Unlike the 'relationship of letting go and giving in' where you let go and let go, in a situation like the 'relationship of looking/being looked at', you feel anxious and your body gradually becomes stiff.
However, this process does not last forever.
The vicious cycle of impatience and stiffness soon leads me to the sensation of defeat, much like in the crawling forward competition, as my movements become increasingly disorganized and directionless.
And the energy that has built up inside me from anxiety and stiffness, when it crosses a certain point, my whole body periodically trembles in convulsions and disappears into thin air, and the coordination structure within my body suddenly loosens and my body becomes limp.

--- p.91

Perhaps it was at this time that I first realized that the self-image of a "weak and small me" that lends itself to sensual contrasts is not something that is given to me for free, but something that I must constantly monitor and regulate to maintain.
I didn't really care when I was in elementary school, but when I entered middle school, I suddenly started to care about how other people saw me, so I started dieting.

--- p.158

When you feel like you're about to deviate from the norm, your body becomes stiff, and when you deviate from the norm, your body relaxes.
There is a sensuality to the repetitive movements of stiffness and relaxation surrounding these norms.
We were trapped in that ‘world of our own’ and endlessly indulged in it.
Where is the other who will bring me the sensuality that opens up into a 'relationship of letting go and picking up each other', the other who will accept my strange movements...?

--- p.182

The moment I saw the renovated bathroom, my body slowly moved as if it was opening up.
It felt like I was tuning my body to a new toilet.
The toilet that had driven me to defeat last time was now reaching out to pick up my movements.
As if drawn by the hand of the toilet, my body slightly relaxed its internal coordination structure, and the resulting play enabled the restructuring, or tuning, of the internal coordination structure.
My body has changed as a result of the bathroom renovation.

--- p.203

The way you perceive the world when you're in a power wheelchair is completely different than when you're not.
Just being able to move quickly to various places reduces the gap with the outside world, and our sense of distance in space changes, as if objects or places that were previously unrelated to us suddenly become close.
As the amount of change in movement, and even the way the world is seen, increases, the passage of time also seems to accelerate.
As my options for action expand dramatically, my body image can feel more empowered.
In this way, the electric wheelchair completely changed my image of the world, including my body.

--- p.222~223

My own unique movements, completed in this way, often include the assistant's body as an essential element.
And between me and my assistant, a strong physical and extra-physical coordination structure, or teamwork, is established.
For example, a colleague who is accustomed to assisting me when drawing blood knows my body's movement patterns very well, so even without me expressing it verbally, he or she can sense the 'meaning' of the subtle movements of my fingertips and adjust the position of his or her hand supporting the patient's elbow.
It was a magical experience, as if my assistant and I had expanded into one large body.
When my assistant and I, two bodies, work together to perform the exercise of drawing blood from the same object, the patient's arm, it feels like the boundary between my body and my assistant's body becomes blurred.

--- p.237~238

I think that in a tense situation, the opportunity to breathe is a kind of sensual motivation to put aside the big picture goals for a moment and get to know each other's bodies through communication.
Rather than a 'relationship of looking/being looked at' that is obsessed with achieving a goal, a mindset that prioritizes a 'relationship of letting go and giving to each other' where the body opens up and one feels a kind of joy in the process of communicating with each other even if one fails to achieve the goal and is defeated allows one to accept each other's body image and creates a cooperative structure.
Then the stiff team will start to move slowly and eventually reach the goal, even if it takes a long way around.

--- p.244