Publisher Bungeishunju Ltd. said Friday it will not sell the remaining copies of a controversial edition of a weekly magazine, after the Tokyo High Court on Wednesday overruled a lower court's injunction barring publication of an article in the edition.
The Tokyo-based publisher had said it would sell about 27,000 copies of the March 17 edition of Shukan Bunshun through its usual distribution routes if readers or bookshops placed orders for them.
No such orders have been placed. The company also decided to halt sales for the time being because the court acknowledged that the story violated the privacy of former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka's daughter to some extent, and the case is pending before the Supreme Court.
The edition featured an article about the failed marriage of Tanaka's daughter.
The 27,000 copies are part of some 30,000 that were subject to the injunction. The other 3,000 copies had already been sent to subscribers with the article in question cut out, according to Bungeishunju.
The company had printed a 770,000 copies of the edition. About 740,000 were not affected by the injunction because they had already arrived at distributors before a judge at the Tokyo District Court issued the injunction March 16.
The 740,000 copies have sold well and are almost sold out, the publishing house said.