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Naked Britney Ad in Tokyo

Soon the citizens of Tokyo will enjoy a bit of slightly unusual entertainment. A station advertisement featuring a naked pregnant Britney Spears will after all be allowed by Tokyo`s subway authority, although it was earlier censored. The publisher of the Japanese edition of Harper`s Bazaar, HB Japan Inc., intends to rent ad space at the posh Omotesando station next week to promote its October issue with Spears posing naked on the cover.

The provocative entertainment ad, in which Spears bares her belly but covers her breasts with her hands, is the same one used in the August issue of the magazine`s U.S. edition. The 24-year-old entertainment star is pregnant with her second child. At first, he publisher unwillingly agreed to blacken out the image from the waist down, covering most of the singer`s belly and thighs, but had planned to write in the black space: "in this place we are not allowed to exercise the same level of freedom of expression as the original Harper`s Bazaar."

However a few days later, Tokyo Metro said it would allow full presentation of the photo as an exception to its obscenity rule, saying it understood the publisher`s intention was to portray a happy mother ? not to be sexually explicit. The entertainment magazine`s deputy chief editor, Kayoko Higashino, welcomed the move. "I`m glad the subway officials understood the meaning of the photo," she said.