The Tokyo High Court has upheld a lower court ruling finding a comic book publisher guilty of distributing obscene comic books containing sex scenes.

While the court upheld the conviction, it lowered Motonori Kishi’s sentence from a suspended prison term to a fine.

Kishi, president of the Tokyo-based comic book publisher Shobunkan Co., was indicted for distributing 20,000 copies of the comic book “Misshitsu,” or “Honey Room,” in 2002.

The court on Thursday suspended a one-year prison term imposed on him and ordered him to pay a fine of 1.5 million yen ($13,800) instead. Kishi has already been fined 500,000 yen ($4,600).

Presiding Judge Kenjiro Tao said that the comics were obscene, but added, “There is a considerable gap in obscenity compared with that in material of real images, such as DVDs.”

The court rejected the defendant’s free-speech plea that the prohibition of the sale of obscene literature is unconstitutional.

The case, originally heard in Tokyo District Court, was the first major case in nearly two decades in Japan to focus on printed adult-oriented material. It also was the first time Japanese comic books, or “manga,” had been targeted under Japan’s criminal code.

Both courts based their rulings on the work’s obscenity on three prerequisites under a 1957 Supreme Court ruling. In a judgment against the translator and publisher of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” by D.H. Lawrence, a landmark ruling said that expression is obscene when it is “unnecessarily sexually stimulating, damages the normal sexual sense of shame of ordinary people, or is against good sexual moral principles.”

American George Weller was the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the U.S. atomic attack on the city on Aug. 9, 1945. Weller wrote a series of stories about what he saw in the city, but censors at the Occupation’s General Headquarters refused to allow the material to be printed. Weller’s stories, written in September 1945, can be found by clicking the above.

Katie West, photo by Matt Wills.

Another composition I’m bound to steal one of these days.

An underground society has emerged among Tokyo’s homeless living beneath the shadows of the capital’s skyscrapers and in its parks.

“Just recently, there’s been a rapid increase in the number of former yakuza gangsters who’ve become homeless. And they’re really aggressive, flashing their tattoos, scaring passers-by and lording over other homeless as they do whatever they like.”

For many Japanese who associate the yakuza with wealth, even if it is the result of ill-gotten gains, the idea of a gangster living on the streets is close to unthinkable. But the number of homeless yakuza inhabiting parks and living under bridges is apparently skyrocketing, especially in central Tokyo…

Okay, for those of you still on Tribe.net, I need interesting Tribes to read while I’m picking around the new profile functionality. Message me through the profile.

– W

A series of three miniatures by Miss Wurzel Tod:

Tribe.net is pushing their new Profile system out of beta and into the hands of us plebs. Mine is at http://people.tribe.net/warrenellis.

It brings back some of the functionality and ease that tribe.net has, to me, lost in their successive iterations. A while back, they made their “tribes” (mini messageboard communities) RSS-accessible, which I’m told has been great — but by then Tribe had already gone through something of a dieback. They’re trying the “hub” thing — handling all of your web-use through the single profile page. You can aggregate your RSS feeds on it, blog through it, launch your IM programs off it… does a lot of what a cultural hub should do, in fact. Tribe may become useful as a networking tool again.

Worth a quick look, anyway.

– W

I forget who sent me this, sorry:

The homes of some 200,000 Zimbabwean city dwellers have been demolished in the past three weeks, according to the United Nations.

Police have been moving from area to area, in some cases forcing people to knock down their own homes. In others, they have turned up with bulldozers to demolish structures which they say have been built illegally.

Worshippers at a Harare mosque have even been made to destroy it, says opposition MP Trudy Stevenson. Thousands of desperate Zimbabweans are living on the streets, others have gone back to their rural homes, while some have managed to squeeze into parts of the cities not yet touched by what some are calling the “tsunami”.

President Robert Mugabe said “Operation Murambatsvina [Drive out rubbish]” was needed to “restore sanity” to Zimbabwe’s cities, which he said had become overrun with criminals…

Mister Ramp’s hair was a vile toxic orange. As were his large, unblinking eyes. As, indeed, was his penis, painted in a sticky antiseptic emulsion to defeat the various Shagging Diseases that remained rife in the Sexual Underworld.

Mister Ramp’s business card proclaimed his vocation to be Colossal Pervert. And all on the Scene knew that Mister Ramp pursued his hideous trade with the zeal of a priest. If a priest’s holy chores involved projecting his lunch into the anuses of badly confused teenage girls from Hungary.

Mister Ramp’s peculiar diet had been the talk of the Sexual Mutant Business for some years. It had even been the subject of one of his many Specialist Videos; the singular cinematic artifact named “Burning Dadpaste.” Some say he can be seen at night wandering into chemical waste dumps with a straw. Others say he’s been witnessed sitting by fresh graves with a knife and fork, smiling politely. Most confess to have watched in admiration and horror as his flying man-batter has seared the paint off walls, melted glass and turned stainless steel soft and black. And all agree that Mister Ramp once used his bizarre spermatic fluids to euthanise a puppy that was thrashing in terminal panic while lodged in the rectum of a German gentleman called Heinz.

Mister Ramp’s penis casts a shadow over the Adult business. Quite literally, if he stands on high ground at noon. Strong men weep and cut themselves in bad places when Mister Ramp demonstrates arcane penile skills learned in Japan and Tibet, using his warrior’s member to snap wood, bricks and sports utility vehicles. Several starlets — three of whom have been since removed to asylums by their families — claim to have seen it conduct lightning. Some producers have begun to sheathe the member in large burlap sacks previous to performances, to prevent other participants prostrating themselves in Religious Awe, and also to stay the occasional manifestation of Miracles in its presence.

Mister Ramp is a Hero of the Humping Industry, loved by the twinks and the coprophages, adored by the size queens and the gangbangers, cherished by the gonzo and the semen shooters. His kindness is the stuff of legend, and the whores kiss him in the street since that mythic day when he crushed a pimp’s spine using only the frighteningly overdeveloped muscles in his buttocks.

Mister Ramp is a Superhero of modern pornography. He is Omnisexual, and can obtain erections of historical significance with no more provocation than the sight of naked fungus. He is a countercultural God in Iceland, where the band Múm’s song “Takk Mister Ramp” became a massive hit following his specialist videos for that country’s market, “Mister Ramp Gives It To Various Species Of Tree That Don’t Grow Here Anymore” and “Mister Ramp Fills The Volcano.”

Mister Ramp lives alone in a quiet area of Los Angeles. He is addicted to Vicodin and has never had a girlfriend. And never will.

(c) Warren Ellis / written November 2004

Rachael Noel: “This would be the guts of one of the ancient fire alarms in my apartment. It worries me.”

©2005 Slinka

(I think it’s time for a medical-fetish project.)

A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said he’s coming to Idaho tomorrow to picket the memorial for an Idaho National Guard soldier killed in Iraq.

A flier on the Web site of Pastor Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church claims God killed Cpl. Carrie French with an improvised explosive device in retaliation against the United States for a bombing at Phelps’ church six years ago.

“We’re coming,” Phelps said yesterday…

(Their God has to improvise explosive devices now? God’s pretty fucking cheap.)

SIlver AJ says:

The binary even spells out “SilverAJ”… Those of you in London who want wicked custom nail designs can get in touch with him – he’s Viet at Perfect Nails, 126 Hoe Street, Walthamstow (0208 520 3113). It’s best to make an appointment – they get mega busy, especially at weekends! It’s normally around £25, but something intricate like this could be up to £30.

A hotel in England could have sold one of the world’s most expensive bottles of whisky.

A businessman paid £32,000 for a rare Dalmore 62 Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky, at the Pennyhill Park Hotel, Bagshot, Surrey, on 24 May.

Only 12 of the bottles were ever produced in 1943, and one was sold at auction in 2002 for just under £26,000.

The Surrey hotel said the man bought the whisky and drank almost all of it in one night with some friends…

This is funny: this guy’s taking pieces of my writing, up to and including comments I’ve written on LiveJournal, and using them as his own — I mean, to the extent that now he was speaking in Toronto the other month, not me. The rest of it is a lukewarm Spider Jerusalem impression. Classic madness.

EDIT: it appears the fraggle in question deleted his site as soon as he saw that I’d noticed it. So, now that I know you’re reading this; my “voice”, whatever that is, comes out of a mix of my life, my sense of humour, my influences and my perspective. That’s how it works. Don’t waste your time cutting and pasting my words — because, believe me, there is never enough time. Broaden your reading. Live your own life. Find your own voice.

Whenever I want to get really depressed, I go to Done Deal Script and Pitch Sales to find out how other people are getting rich:

Title: I’d Tell You I Love You but Then I’d Have to Kill You
Log Line: At an isolated girls school outside Washington, D.C., all the students are daughters of spies and are secretly being trained to become agents themselves. Trouble begins when one of the girls has a romance with a local boy.

Title: The Dogs of Babel
Log Line: A grieving linguistics professor tries to communicate with his Rhodesian Ridgeback because the dog was the only witness to the death of the man’s wife, who fell from a tree in their backyard.

Title: Quiet Type
Log Line: A mute from a small town moves to New York to pursue his dreams of conducting an orchestra.

Title: Darksiders
Log Line: A band of vampires become special operatives for the FBI.

Title: Billy Grimm
Log Line: The first Grimm Reaper with a heart is born.

Title: The Impossible Adventures of Phineas Roone
Log Line: A 13-year-old Brooklyn boy sets out to find the anonymous author of a popular fantasy-adventure book series when the publisher offers a million-dollar prize to whomever can find the mysterious scribe. The boy then discovers that the fantastical tales in the books are real.

(In the pitch meeting: “What if Willy Wonka fucked Harry Potter?”)

Title: The Richest Man in the World
Log Line: The poorest man in the world gets the chance to walk in the shoes of the richest man in the world.