In the Morning

Music by Kyohei Tsutsumi, lyrics by Rei Nakanishi, originally sung by Sumiko Sakamoto in 1971.

Her first single after a label switch, it was the second collaboration between CBS/Sony producer Masatoshi Sakai and Nichion publisher Mamoru Murakami using that same songwriting team, their work the previous year on Yukiji Asaoka's "Till the Rain is Over" leading to multiple requests for work by veteran female singers who wanted a career revitalization. Tsutsumi composed it to sound like Andean folk music, with 12-string gut guitars and recorders in the arrangement to emulate the charango and quena. The melody drifts slightly between the words, many of which are written in hiragana instead of kanji.

This, alongside Simon & Garfunkel's "El Cóndor Pasa" cover, awakened Jun Togawa's interest in Andean folk music. To cover it for her third solo album, 1989's The Dying Year of the Showa Era (昭和享年), she had Susumu Hirasawa—whose output at the time featured heavy Incan theming—arrange it.