One of the songs from Yumi Matsutoya's（松任谷由実）"OLIVE" that I couldn't include in my article for the album yesterday was "Kishuu" since I couldn't find it in its entirety on YouTube. However, there is a brief excerpt of it on the Amazon page below.
The arrangement for the original song kept reminding me of "El Condor Pasa" because of those pan flutes. "Kishuu" was actually Yuming's 13th single from June 1979 and it only did very modestly on Oricon, getting as high as No. 89...not too high compared to how "OLIVE" did.
To be honest, I may actually enjoy the cover version performed by Naoko Ken（研ナオコ）since it has more of a contemporary City Pop sheen to it. She first released the song as her 37th single in November 1985 and it was also a track on her 14th album "Deep" which came out on the same day as the single.
As for "Kishuu", apparently the kanji compound may not exactly exist...at least, not as a regular word per se, since my online dictionaries didn't register it. However, the overall meaning comes across as "return to regret". And that is what the song is all about...a lady who meets an old flame but just can't come around to say how she truly feels about him and goes home filled with regret.
Hearing Ken's voice, it has always had that smoky and cracking quality to it like burning embers or representing a woman who's seen it all and has become cynically world-weary. I would say on that point, she makes "Kishuu" work. That City Pop arrangement also sounds better here than the original's inclusion of pan flutes and mandolin.
Not sure how she (or her manager) did it, but less than 2 months after releasing "Kishuu", Ken found herself performing that very song on the 1985 Kohaku Utagassen. I'm not sure whether it even got onto the Oricon rankings.
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