it their lowest first-week sales at the time. The following week, dated January 2, 2006, it slipped to number 10 with 18,868 copies sold. Because Oricon accumulated two weeks worth of sales due to their New Years policy, the company did not publish an update until January 16, where "Passion" moved two places down with 22,877 copies. The track made its final appearance inside the top 40 at number 16 selling 6,061 copies, dated on January 23. Overall, it spent 16 weeks inside the top 200 chart and sold 112,345 units by the end of its initial chart run, marking this the singers lowest selling single of her career, until their 2008 double A-side release "Stay Gold" / "Heart Station". At the end of 2006, Oricon ranked the single as the 91st best selling single in Japan. "Passion" debuted at number four on Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) Count Down TV chart, a similar opening to Oricon. The single charted for nine weeks, one of her shortest spans within the Count TV archive. Despite this, "Passion" was certified Gold twice by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for digital and cellphone sales of 100,000 units. Music video Background and direction An accompanying music video for "Passion" was directed by Utada's ex-husband Kazuaki Kiriya, where it was filmed at the Gung-Ho Films studios in Beijing, China. At the start of the video, an animation sequence was created and produced by Kōji Morimoto, whom helmed a design-based campaign for the singers album Exodus, which was recognized as Fluximation-style animations. The remaining additions of computer generated imagery were generated by the company N-Design. Several workers had hand-made the scenery including the infrastructure of the grand-hall (seating for the drummers, floor design, etc.) and the cathedral (the walls, platform for Utada, floor); Kiriya placed a blue screen behind these structures in order to expand them to higher lengths. Utada said that majority of the dancers and drummers had choreographed intensely before commencing the video shoot; Utada had jokingly stated that they apologized several times whilst messing up the routines. For the final scene, several producers hired horse riders in order to lead a herd of horses to run through the corn field. After this scene was complete, Utada wore the same outfit designed by Kozue Hibino, which is a large coated–dress with a trail of puffy inserts, and sung it in the same location.