It was when Hyungsik Lee entered the prestigious University of Tokyo that he realized Japan's social stratification.
Having grown up in one of dozens of municipal government-run houses for low-income households in Hyogo Prefecture, poverty used to be part of his daily scenery. On the way to his local elementary school were dwellings with homeless people where he saw a man who froze to death taken away by an ambulance. At school, about half of his classmates were from single-parent households with financial difficulties.
Some dropped out of high school, while some were sent to juvenile detention centers for committing crimes, he said. When Lee, 26, thanks to his education-minded mother, went on to enter the nation's top university, many of his local friends were working at factories or fast-food chains.