Leper colonies in Japan? This sounds like an echo from a distant past. But they still exist until today. Their inhabitants have been cured for decades- but remain outcasts. Only in 1996 was the enforced strict isolation lifted by law. Most inhabitants stayed in the fourteen now called sanatoriums where they led a miserable life of isolation, hard labour and inhuman treatment. Today they receive adequate care, housing and medical treatment. A report for GEO Magazin Germany about the last survivors on the island Oshima.