★ The debut novel of practicing physician Yō Kusakabe — a work so shocking it was long deemed "impossible to film." Twenty years later, it finally arrives on the big screen nationwide in Japan on May 15, 2026, starring Sōmetani Shōta. Cumulative sales have surpassed 100,000 copies.
★ The author is a graduate of Osaka University Medical School and has served as a surgeon, anesthesiologist, rural clinic doctor, and Foreign Ministry medical officer (stationed in Vienna). His representative work The Evil Doctor won the 3rd Japan Medical Novel Award, and both Rupture and Painless have been adapted into television dramas — making him a benchmark author at the intersection of medical suspense and ethical inquiry.
★ "Disused body" refers to limbs paralyzed by cerebral infarction or other conditions — limbs that will never move or recover. With patient consent, Dr. Urushibara amputates these disused limbs one after another. Is he a pioneer offering salvation to patients, or a "demon doctor" who deserves to be denounced by the media?
★ A novel that readers describe as "thinking it was horror, only to realize it reads like a documentary from the frontlines of nursing care." In an era of accelerating population aging, the weight of this book only grows heavier with time.
★ It does not take the path of The Evil Doctor in dissecting overtreatment, nor does it follow The Death Caregiver into the territory of extreme crime. It asks its question in the gray zone between the two: for the sake of those who remain alive, what are we permitted to do with a body that has lost all function?

"Disused body" refers to limbs that, due to conditions such as cerebral infarction, have become paralyzed — limbs that will never move or recover.

Dr. Urushibara, a physician engaged in geriatric care in Kobe, devises a revolutionary treatment for patients suffering from both physical and mental incapacitation: the amputation of disused body parts. With patient consent, he carries out the procedure again and again — until the media catches wind of it and publicly denounces him as a demon doctor.

The debut novel of Yō Kusakabe, known for Rupture — a work of unparalleled shock and visceral power.

Yō Kusakabe
Born in Osaka Prefecture in 1963. A graduate of Osaka University Medical School, his medical career has spanned roles as a surgeon, anesthesiologist, physician at a remote clinic in Nagano Prefecture, and Foreign Ministry medical officer stationed in Vienna — equipping him with both deep clinical experience and an international medical perspective.

He made his literary debut in 2003 with Disused Body, a novel built around a single, devastating question: can a limb that has permanently lost its function be removed, if doing so would improve the quality of life for both patient and family? The book ignited fierce controversy upon publication and was widely discussed as a work "impossible to adapt to film" — a label it carried for twenty years until it was finally brought to the screen in May 2026, starring Sōmetani Shōta. Cumulative sales have exceeded 100,000 copies. His second novel, Rupture, was hailed as "the White Tower of the Heisei era" and was adapted into an NHK television drama in 2015. In 2014, he received the 3rd Japan Medical Novel Award for The Evil Doctor, a novel that — along with Painless and The Hand of God, both also adapted for television — exemplifies his career-long commitment to probing the ethical gray zones and structural dilemmas at the heart of medical practice. He is widely regarded as Japan's preeminent physician-author, combining professional authority with formidable narrative power.