is a Japanese word processor produced by JustSystems, a Japanese software company. Ichitaro occupies the second share in Japanese word-processing software, behind Microsoft Word. It is one of the main products of the company. Its proprietary file extension is ".JTD". ATOK, an IME developed by JustSystems, is bundled with Ichitaro.
In the MS-DOS era, Ichitaro had a considerable market share along with other rivals. As Windows became dominant, the market was largely taken over by Microsoft Word.
Origin of name
"" was named by , a founder of JustSystems. When he worked part-time as a tutor, one of his learners' names was Taro. He died of sickness when Kazunori worked at the company. Taro is also a common Japanese given name used for the eldest son. Sanyo Electric already had a trademark right of the name, so JustSystems added a prefix "" as they hoped the software won the best.
History
Beginnings
JustSystems was founded in July 1979 by and Kazunori Ukigawa, and was incorporated in June 1981. Kazunori worked at a subsidiary company of Toshiba, and he was interested in Japanese-language computing. Toshiba released in February 1979, the first word processor for the Japanese language, but it sold less than their business computers. He founded the company as a dealer of business computers, and they started selling Japanese language software. After the release of PC-8801, they developed an invoicing software for it, which printed out estimations and invoices in Japanese. They demonstrated it at trade fairs, and received a positive response. The jX-WORD for the IBM JX was released and in 1985, jX-WORD Taro was released for PC-9801. jX-WORD Taro was priced at ¥58,000, which was the middle price among Japanese word processor software, and sold 9,700 copies.
Domination in Japan PC market
thumb|Ichitaro Ver.3 for [[PC-9800 series|PC-98]]
The same year, Ichitaro was released as its definite successor. Ichitaro's system disk contained ATOK 4 and a runtime version of MS-DOS 2.11. It allowed users to use other MS-DOS applications with Japanese language support.
The first version of Ichitaro has shipped 29,000 copies. Ichitaro Ver.2 has shipped 80,000 copies. Ichitaro Ver.3 was the first version ported for other Japanese DOS platforms. It has shipped more than 300,000 copies until 1991. Total shipments of Ichitaro reached one million in November 1991. ATOK 7 was bundled with Ichitaro 4, and was available as a standalone product in 1992.
Arrival of Microsoft Word
Microsoft released the first Japanese version of Microsoft Word for Windows in 1991. Four years passed before Ichitaro 5 was released for Japanese DOS platforms in April 1993. The next month, Microsoft released the Japanese Windows 3.1 and the first Japanese version of Microsoft Office, which included Word 5.0 and Excel 4.0. Its successors shipped 200,000 copies per month in late 1994. JustSystems barely completed a Windows adaptation of Ichitaro in December 1993, but Microsoft took over the market dominated by Ichitaro and Lotus 1-2-3.