Belli Looks at Life and Law in Japan

Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1960. Hardcover. Foreword by Errol Flynn. Preface by Toshio Irie. 8vo. Lavender cloth spine with black lettering and tan paper over boards, pictorial dust jacket. 320pp. Frontispiece, illustrations, pictorial endpapers. Near fine/very good. Mild jacket edgewear. Tight and nice first edition of this unusual look at Japan's jurisprudence system by the colorful and controversial defense attorney (1907-96) whose lengthy list of celebrity clients included Jack Ruby, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mae West, Tony Curtis, Muhammad Ali, The Rolling Stones -- and actor Errol Flynn, who provides the oddball foreword to this book. Belli boldly inscribes and signs the front flyleaf in blue ballpoint "To Luke Carroll / with all good wishes / Melvin Belli / Indianapolis, June 8, 1960." An illustration near page 65 shows a trenchcoat-clad Westerner standing between two Japanese women in front of a pagoda and is captioned "Luke Carroll, of the New York Herald Tribune, poses between two girls dressed as they have been for centuries." (Luke P. Carroll, 1916-82, served as managing editor of "The New York Herald Tribune" and "Chicago's American" before becoming editor of "Chicago Today" in 1968.).