Japan's highest court allows Mapplethorpe book to be sold

Japan's Supreme Court has made a landmark decision allowing the sale of a book of erotic photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

The ruling erases a 2003 decision by the Tokyo High Court that banned the book's sale because it was deemed indecent.Tuesday's ruling is believed to be the first time the top court has overturned a lower court decision on obscenity.

Publisher Takashi Asai called it "groundbreaking" and predicted the ruling might "change [Japan's] obscenity standard."

Justice Kohei Nasu said the black-and-white portraits were from an "artistic point of view" and in the end, it was the majority opinion of the five-judge panel that Mapplethorpe was "a leading figure in contemporary art."

The justices did, however, reject Asai's demand for government compensation to the tune of about $20,000 US.

Japan's domestic obscenity laws were relaxed in the 1990s but imported publications are handled by customs and the laws still ban images of genitals.

Asai, of Uplink publishers, had argued that the import ban was obsolete, pointing out the Mapplethorpe book was in the Japanese parliament's library and that copies were offered for sale on the internet.

His company had been selling the Japanese version of Mapplethorpe's 384-page book since 1994. The book, entitled Robert Mapplethorpe, contains 20 close-up photos of male genitalia.

Confiscated at customs

Everything changed in 1999 when airport customs officials in Japan confiscated a copy of the book that Asai had been carrying.

Then Tokyo police visited him and gave him a warning, causing Asai to voluntarily suspend sales of the book in 2000.

Asai decided to go to court and in 2002, he won a case in Tokyo District Court. The government was ordered to give back his book and to pay $6,480 US in damages.But a year later, a higher court overturned that ruling.At that point,Asai took the case to the highest court in the land.

Mapplethorpe died of AIDS at age 42 in 1989 but his photographs live on.He's known for his sensual images of human bodies, sex and nudity.