”Ichitaro” (the first version)

"Ichitaro" (the first version) was a Japanese language word processor software developed and released by JustSystems Corporation in August 1985.

It introduced easy operations very well fitted to Japanese people to write Japanese sentences, such as, the method to convert KANA characters to KANJI (Chinese) characters by pressing Space key, and the use of Escape key to display Escape Menu showing commands selectable by key board.

Ichitaro's KANA-KANJI conversion software, a fundamental software to a Japanese word rocessor, was named "ATOK4". It employed plural clause conversion method and realized very good conversion accuracy. "ATOK4" could be integrated with another MS-DOS application making it possible to use Japanese language input environment on other softwares. It was an epoch-making invention.

Ichitaro was priced 58,000 yen,relatively cheap compared to other major softwares which were priced around 100,000yen. Hence, Ichitaro was accepted by the Japanese market quickly, and became the synonym for Japanese language word processor software. Ichitaro promoted the use of PC during PC's popularization ages and made it popular to produce documents by a word processor in business environment.

The 20th version Ichitaro, "Ichitaro2010", was released in 2010. Ichitaro still continues to progress even after 25 years since its introduction of the first version.