Yumi Hotta author page

Yumi Hotta biography

Yumi Hotta (堀田由美) is a Japanese manga author born on 15 October 1957 in Aichi Prefecture. She created Hikaru no Go, a manga series about the board game Go that contributed to renewed international interest in the game. Takeshi Obata illustrated the series, and the professional Go player Yukari Umezawa served as supervisor.

Hikaru no Go was serialized from 1998 to 2003. It won the 2000 Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen manga and the 2003 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.

Hotta also published a short manga series about long-track speed skating in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2005.

Before she began writing manga, Hotta conceived the idea of Hikaru no Go after playing Go with her father-in-law. She originally proposed the working title Nine Stars (九つの星, Kokonotsu no Hoshi), named for the nine “star points” on a Go board.