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Kishi immediately appealed in the Tokyo High Court. Murayama, who as prime minister issued an apology in 1995 for Japan's wartime aggression, said that it was time for Tokyo to finally resolve the issue of the so-called "comfort women" who were drafted into military brothels. 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 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.

Four Japanese basketball players have been sent home from the Asian Games for allegedly paying prostitutes for sex, the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) said on Monday. Two people -- the cartoonist and the chief editor of the comic book -- have been fined 500,000 yen (4,700 dollars) each. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said 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.

In a bid to narrow the gap over history, the two governments launched a joint study four years ago, but a report on its results issued on Friday showed the two sides were sharply at odds on many subjects, including the sex slaves issue. In addition to a territorial row over two tiny islands, many South Koreans feel Japan has not squarely faced its wartime past, including the brutal 1910-1945 rule of the Korean peninsula. Jun Byung-hun, a spokesman for South Korea's ruling Uri Party, said on Sunday.

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. 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 Kishi's defence counsel had argued that an article in Japan's penal code, a片 which prohibits the sale and distribution of obscene literature, violated the constitution which guarantees freedom of expression.

Japan's top government spokesman sought to contain any further damage, saying Tokyo was sorry for the sex slaves. 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.

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.