Bill Totten (Chairman and Representative Director)

Bill Totten is Chairman and Representative Director of K.K. Ashisuto, Japan's leading independent distributor of packaged computer software for large organizations.

He was born, raised and educated in Southern California. His education includes a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in economics from the University of Southern California.

Dr. Totten worked on the Apollo program at Rockwell Corporation from 1963 to 1967 and on various projects at System Development Corporation from 1967 to 1971. SDC sent him to Tokyo in August 1969 to research the Japanese computer market, and he has lived here continuously since then. His market research convinced him of the great potential for packaged computer software in Japan. When SDC decided not to enter the software package business in Japan, Dr. Totten resigned and established K.K. Ashisuto in March 1972 to distribute computer software packages to corporations and other large organizations. Dr. Totten has been CEO of K.K. Ashisuto ever since. Under his leadership, the company has grown from a small staff in Tokyo providing a few localized software packages, to a highly-regarded nationwide enterprise by distributing, supporting and providing consultative services for dozens of software packages to thousands of leading Japanese corporations.

K.K. Ashisuto Company Overview

Dr. Totten has written a dozen books, speaks publicly throughout Japan and currently writes a weekly newspaper column addressing economic, social and political issues and the necessity of learning from and preserving traditional culture.

Throughout his business career, he has given top priority to customers and employees. He strives to provide an environment where employees can secure themselves lifelong, remunerative, enjoyable jobs that foster their growth as individuals while offering the satisfaction of contributing materially to society. He insists that the main requisite for accomplishing this is to consistently and honestly provide useful products and services to customers and believes that a company doing so will grow to its optimal or natural size. He rejects both growth for growth's sake and mining a business to enrich stockholders or executives.