Nostalgia attack!

This KineJapan query popped into my inbox today and set off a glorious stream of nostalgia. (Though apparently only for me. Everyone else is talking about contemporary film.) The query:

I have a grind interested in films on law in Japan. This would be an easy lot to whip out for Hollywood film, but few titles come to mind for Japan. How about you folks?

The question immediately transported me to my childhood, when my parents would rent bootleg VHS recordings of Tokusou Saizensen which I'd watch from the shag carpeted floor, head propped onto hands, elbows digging into the ground.



It would take another 20 years for me to remember the name of the show, because all I could really remember was the melancholy end-credits-theme.



I mean, is that a sad song to remember or is that a sad song to remember.
Am I right?

The story of how I got re-acquainted with the show is pretty ridiculous too. I was in a dark corner of an even darker bar, in Tokyo, sipping on whiskey with my old publishing employers and Kitakata Kenzo, the most revered and renowned hardboiled author in Japan, talking about my personal knowledge of hardboiled fiction. I grasped at the memory of this dorama, unable to remember much else besides the song, and I couldn't even remember a whole lot about the song, except something about a "juujika" (cross). But that's all it took.
Everyone at the table interrupted me in unison:

Tokuso Saizensen.

In retrospect, this was without doubt, the equivalent of me meeting someone in 20 years graspng at memories of Law & Order and saying, "all I remember is this sound effect... DUN-dun."