March 8, 2024

I almost put this book down in the introduction because it came off as so ableist. It presents prosthetics as the thing that allows amputees to return to 'normal' lives because it lets them walk 'normally', presents the amputees themselves as superhumans who to a one are all trying really hard to reach their dreams and never giving up, and explicitly invites the (clearly imagined to not be disabled) reader to use them as inspiration fuel. Ick. Fortunately, the rest of the book drops most of this; it emphasizes how the process of making and developing prosthetics has to be done together with the amputees who use them, and Usui also celebrates his patients who fight, in various ways, against stereotypes that imagine the disabled to sit around quietly at home.

I also didn't particularly like how the Usui presents the alternatives to prostheses - of course, as a prosthetic maker who is proud of his work, I would expect him to talk them up and focus on them as a way to help those with limb loss. If it had just been that, I wouldn't have minded. But while prosthetic limb usage is high among lower-limb amputees, it's not 100% for all sorts of reasons, and he puts down solutions like wheelchairs and crutches in order to talk about how amazing prosthetic legs are. On the other hand, the downsides of prosthetics are mostly either presented instead as evidence of how hard the makers work to make the patient happy with their new leg, or are glossed over. The one exception to this that I can remember is that Usui does discuss how falling can be scary and dangerous for people using prosthetic legs. Finally, while I realize this is common in Japan, I also wasn't a fan of how Usui valorizes his own overwork. At one point he describes collapsing from stress-induced anemia and still working pretty much all day, because he couldn't let his normal patients wait but also couldn't let down the guy relying on his side project for the Paralympics, and this isn't shown in a negative light.

The main reason for my low rating on this one, though, is just that I found a lot of it to not be that interesting, and parts of it were repetitive. There were three main parts to the book:

  • How prosthetic legs are made (I found this to be interesting, especially the notes on things like how Japanese early adopters of Western prosthetics found the knee joint broke of because of seiza)
  • How Usui became a prostheticist (I found this to mostly not be very interesting)

  • Focus on sports prosthetics and the clinic's running club, including some of Usui's patients who competed at the Paralympics (I found this to be a mixed bag; some stories didn't really go anywhere, while some were pretty compelling)

Language: Partial furigana. The book is directed towards a younger audience, so the language is mostly not too complex, with the exception of some medical terms. Each chapters has many subsections, so you can easily pick it up or put it down at any point.

Gradings:10
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Mizuki graded
on November 6, 2024
Mizuki graded
on March 8, 2024
easier thanあめのちはれ 1L24
Mizuki graded
on March 8, 2024
Mizuki graded
on March 8, 2024
Mizuki graded
on March 8, 2024
Mizuki graded
on March 8, 2024
Mizuki graded
on March 8, 2024
easier than水の館L23
Mizuki graded
on March 8, 2024