#5 <br> within <td> destroys table

[skymab]

Hi,

I've got a document which has linebreaks in table cells. It looks like this:
<tr align="center">
<td>ん<br><span>(n)</span></td>
<td>わ</td>
...
<th>a</th>
</tr>

The line with the linebreak is translated to:
\hline
ん
\\(n) & わ & ら & や & ま & は & な & た & さ & か & あ & \textbf{a} \\

which destroys the table-layout because latex thinks a new table row is starting.

Is there a workaround for this behaviour? Can I preprocess my html file somehow in order to obtain a correct output?

[skymab]

A possible workaround is to change the 'br' tag from @NL\\ to @NL\newline