Tokyo, Japan - The Supreme Court of Japan on Tuesday overruled a 2003 Tokyo High Court decision and decided that “Mapplethorpe,” a book of erotic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89),  did not violate obscenity laws, The Associated Press reported. The decision should pave the way for sale of the book in Japan for the first time in eight years.

Although it decided that the book was not indecent, the Supreme Court rejected a demand by the publisher, Uplink, for government compensation of $20,370, according to Takashi Ando, a spokesman for the court. Takashi Asai of Uplink had been contesting the confiscation of the book in 1999 and his voluntary suspension of its sales in 2000 in response to police warnings. In the Supreme Court decision, by a majority of the five-judge bench, Justice Kohei Nasu wrote that the 384-page volume of black-and-white portraits, including 20 close-ups of male genitalia, “compiles work from the artistic point of view, and is not obscene as a whole.”

Mr. Asai sold about 900 copies of the Japanese version of “Mapplethorpe,” originally published in Japan by Random House in 1994 without objection from the authorities. But airport customs officials, declaring the book obscene, confiscated Mr. Asai’s copy when he returned from a trip to the United States in 1999. He called the Supreme Court decision “groundbreaking” and said it “could change the obscenity standard” used for banning foreign films that depict nudity and for censoring photographs in books.

Biography

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946, the third of six children. He remembered a very secure childhood on Long Island, which he summed up by saying, “I come from suburban America. It was a very safe environment, and it was a good place to come from in that it was a good place to leave.” He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he produced artwork in a variety of media. His early interest reflected the importance of the photographic image in the culture and art of our time, including the work of such notable artists as Andy Warhol, whom Mapplethorpe greatly admired.

Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter, using a Polaroid camera. He did not consider himself a photographer, but wished to use his own photographic images in his paintings, rather than pictures from magazines. “I never liked photography,” he is quoted as saying, “Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.”  The shift to photography as Mapplethorpe’s sole means of expression happened gradually during the mid-seventies. He acquired a large format press camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. These included artists, composers, socialites, pornographic film stars and members of the S & M underground. Some of these photographs were shocking for their content but exquisite in their technical mastery.  Mapplethorpe told ARTnews in late 1988, “I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking.’ I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before…I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.”