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Publisher challenges genitals picture ban
A publisher has taken to Japan's top court his eight-year fight over the banning of imported images of male genitals in a book of pictures by the late American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Publisher Takashi Asai told Reuters he expected to win his case because the court had taken the step of agreeing to hear his appeal of a lower court ruling that the book, which includes sado-masochistic homosexual images, was obscene.
Asai, who heads a film distribution company, translated and published a collection of Mapplethorpe's works in Japan in 1994, based on imported negatives that customs did not check.
But when Asai carried a copy of his book back from the United States in 1999, it was seized by customs officials and he has battled with courts since to reverse the move.
Japan's domestic obscenity laws were relaxed in the 1990s to allow pictures of pubic hair, but imported publications are handled by customs and it still bans images of genitals.
A publisher has taken to Japan's top court his eight-year fight over the banning of imported images of male genitals in a book of pictures by the late American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Publisher Takashi Asai told Reuters he expected to win his case because the court had taken the step of agreeing to hear his appeal of a lower court ruling that the book, which includes sado-masochistic homosexual images, was obscene.
Asai, who heads a film distribution company, translated and published a collection of Mapplethorpe's works in Japan in 1994, based on imported negatives that customs did not check.
But when Asai carried a copy of his book back from the United States in 1999, it was seized by customs officials and he has battled with courts since to reverse the move.
Japan's domestic obscenity laws were relaxed in the 1990s to allow pictures of pubic hair, but imported publications are handled by customs and it still bans images of genitals.
