The Tokyo High Court on Thursday reduced the sentence imposed by a lower court on a comic book publisher who was convicted of distributing obscene comic books featuring graphic sex scenes.
While the court upheld the conviction, it lowered Motonori Kishi's sentence from a suspended prison term to a fine.
The court ordered Kishi, 56, to pay a 1.5 million yen fine, overturning the suspended one-year prison term that the Tokyo District Court had handed down in January 2004.