The two sides have been unable to set a date for a regular summit meeting between Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, which they had agreed to hold by the end of June. Eminent academics and critics had testified that it was not a matter for the state to judge obscenity and restricting expression was unconstitutional. The book, consisting of eight short stories, was priced at 920 yen (8.7 dollars) Two people -- the cartoonist and the chief editor of the comic book -- have been fined 500,000 yen (4,700 dollars) each.

Japan committed indescribable wrongdoings by forcing women from South Korea and elsewhere to serve as sex slaves to its wartime troops, former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama said yesterday. The penal code article itself does not clearly define obscenity but the legal precedent was set by a 1957 Supreme Court ruling over a Japanese translation of D.H. Kishi's defence counsel had argued that an article in Japan's penal code, which prohibits the sale and distribution of obscene literature, violated the constitution which guarantees freedom of expression.

A comic book which depicts genitalia and sexual acts in two thirds of its content was ruled obscene in a landmark court case which has sparked a debate on freedom of expression in Japan. It was the first Japanese court trial in which a comic book stood accused of being obscene and the first in 20 years dealing with printed pornography, despite the presence of a huge amount of pornographic cartoons, photographs and videos on bookstands and on the Internet in Japan In April 2002, Kishi sold some 20,500 copies of the 144-page book, entitled "Misshitsu (Honey Room)" and marketed as for adults only.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Kishi immediately appealed in the Tokyo High Court. Education Minister Nariaki Nakayama was quoted by media over the weekend as saying the term "comfort women," a euphemism for the sex slaves, did not exist during the war and it was good the term had disappeared from school textbooks Ties between Japan and South Korea have been strained by a range of feuds, including one over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to a Tokyo shrine for the war dead which Seoul, like China, sees as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

Jun Byung-hun, a spokesman for South Korea's ruling Uri Party, said on Sunday. But the term "comfort women" is set to disappear from many government-approved history textbooks for junior high schools from next year, Japanese media have reported. Japan apologized again on Monday for the suffering of women who served as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II, a day after comments by a cabinet minister drew an angry reaction in South Korea.

A片做爱 Historians estimate that as many as 200,000 women, mostly Korean, were forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels during World War II. The Tokyo District Court found Monotori Kishi, a 54-year-old publisher, guilty of distributing obscene printed material and handed him a one-year prison term suspended for three years.