Dropping an earlier plan to censor the photo, the subway walls in Tokyo will now feature a nude and pregnant Britney Spears. The advertisement space at the posh Omotesando station next week will be rented by HB Japan Inc., publisher of the Japanese edition of Harper's Bazaar. They aim to promote their October issue with Spears posing naked on the cover.

The AP reports that the advertisement that will appear in Tokyo is the same that was used in the August issue of the magazine's U.S. edition. It shows the 24 year old Spears baring her belly but she covers her breasts with her hands.

The nudity in the advertisement was strongly objected by Tokyo Metro Co.'s obscenity screening team that asked HB Japan to modify the photograph during negotiations last month.

It was then decided that the picture would be blacken out from the waist down - covering most of the singer's belly and thighs - but the publisher 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 on Thursday, Tokyo Metro gave permission to allow full presentation of the advertisement reasoning it understood the publisher's intention was to portray a happy mother and not to be sexually explicit.

Kayoko Higashino, the magazine's deputy chief editor, is quoted by AP as saying, "I'm glad the subway officials understood the meaning of the photo."

However Higashino had earlier called the restriction "ridiculous," saying Spears would look "like a chubby woman" and not someone who is pregnant.

Tokyo Metro spokesman Tatsuya Edakubo said that in principle, nudity is not accepted in ads in subway cars and stations, "Our earlier request to cover the photo from the waist down was because of nudity, not because we had anything against pregnant women."

Around 50 posters would be displayed in the Omotesando display for the fashion magazine, five of them of Spears.