The popular perception of Japanese society is that it possesses a homogeneity and cultural conformity unlike anything to be found in the West. In fact Japan has its own underclass living outside the mainstream in economic circumstances that are radically different to the more usual perception of a wealthy and sucessful society. Carolyn S. Stevens has produced a new study that intimately explores the lives of Japan's social outcasts as well as those volunteers who seek to help them and as a consequence become socially marginalized themselves.