Manga publishers fear they will become targets of police crackdowns on pornography.

In a ruling that could deal a blow to publishers, the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday found a comic book obscene and gave a suspended prison sentence to its publisher.

Motonori Kishi, 54, president of Shobunkan Corp. in Tokyo, was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years, for distributing 20,000 copies of the adult comic ``Misshitsu'' (Honey room) in 2002 that had graphic depictions of sex.

It was the first major ruling in two decades on obscenity in a published work. It is also the first examining whether a comic book is obscene.

Critics fear the ruling could prompt police to move against comic publishers in the same way they do against pornographic videos and glossy photo magazines.

Amid a flood of revealing pornography in publications, on Web sites and in photo books, the court case questioned whether conventional measures of obscenity apply in this age of changing social norms.

``The comic in question, `Misshitsu,' mainly panders to prurient interest,'' said Presiding Judge Yujiro Nakatani. ``The sound social norm that would condone this does not exist even today.''

Citing Article 175 of the Criminal Code, which bans sale and distribution of obscene literature, the ruling supported past rulings that said freedom of expression may be restricted to sustain sound public morals.

In 1951, the Supreme Court set three criteria defining obscene literature: unnecessarily stimulating sexual desire, damaging citizens' sense of modesty and running counter to good public morals.

In a famous 1957 ruling, the top court found the translator and the publisher of a Japanese version of D.H. Lawrence's ``Lady Chatterley's Lover'' guilty of violating the criteria, but noted social norms could change.

In a 1980 ruling, the Supreme Court said artistic and intellectual values must also be considered.

Tuesday's ruling said in effect that pictures speak louder than words in stimulating the senses. As more than 80 percent of ``Misshitsu'' is dedicated to sexual depictions, ``it is impossible to find anything more than prurient interest'' in the comic, it said.

The defense, which insisted the book was not obscene under current norms, called the ruling unfair. Kishi told a news conference he feared the ruling would intimidate graphic artists and send the comic industry into decline.

The editor and the cartoonist, arrested with Kishi, were fined earlier in summary judgments.

Yasuhiro Kikuchi, who leads an association of 93 small publishers, said the ruling is ``worlds apart from social common sense.'' He added that one police action could easily send a minor publisher into financial crisis.(IHT/Asahi: January 14,2004) (01/14)