is a Japanese manga artist

Mangaka

is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...

, born in Aichi Prefecture

Aichi Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region. The region of Aichi is also known as the Tōkai region. The capital is Nagoya. It is the focus of the Chūkyō Metropolitan Area.- History :...

, Japan in 1957.

Hotta is best known as the author of the best-selling manga and anime series Hikaru no Go

Hikaru no Go

is a manga series, a coming of age story based on the board game Go written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata with an anime adaptation. The production of the series' Go games was supervised by Go professional Yukari Umezawa...

, about the game of go

Go (board game)

Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...

 that is widely credited for the recent boom of the game in Japan. The idea behind Hikaru no Go began when Yumi Hotta played a pick-up game

Pick-up game

In sports, a pick-up game is a game that has been spontaneously started by a group of players. Unlike exhibition games and regular games, players are generally invited to show up beforehand, but there is no sense of obligation or commitment to play. Pick-up games usually lack officials and...

 of go with her father-in-law. She thought that it might be fun to create a manga based on this traditional board game, and began the work under the title of , named for the nine "star points" on a go board. She later worked with Takeshi Obata

Takeshi Obata

is a Japanese manga artist. He works as the artist in collaboration with a writer. He has also mentored several manga artists, including Kentaro Yabuki of Black Cat fame, Nobuhiro Watsuki of Rurouni Kenshin and Busou Renkin, and Yusuke Murata of Eyeshield 21.He originally became noticed in 1985...

 (the illustrator) and Yukari Umezawa

Yukari Umezawa

née is a Japanese Go professional.-Biography:Umezawa became a professional Go player in 1996. She then attained the rank of 5-dan in 2002 at the age of 29, and was married in the same year. Umezawa supervised the production of Hikaru no Go, a manga about Go written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by...

 (5-Dan

Dan rank

The ranking system is a Japanese mark of level, which is used in modern fine arts and martial arts. Originally invented in a Go school in the Edo period, this system was applied to martial arts by Kanō Jigorō, the founder of judo and later introduced to other East Asia countries.In the modern...

, the supervisor) in the creation of Hikaru no Go. She won the 2000 Shogakukan Manga Award

Shogakukan Manga Award

The is one of Japan's major manga awards, sponsored by Shogakukan Publishing. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga since 1955 and features candidates from a number of publishers.The current award categories are:...

 and the 2003 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for Hikaru no Go.

Hotta's husband is , another manga artist known for manga about horse-racing. He was also well-known as a contributor to the Chunichi Shimbun

Chunichi Shimbun

The is a Japanese daily "broadsheet" newspaper published in mostly Aichi Prefecture and neighboring regions by . It is the owner of the Chunichi Dragons baseball team, and is also known as the main organizer of a famous international gymnastics event, the Chunichi Cup...

where he illustrated under the pen name , making the Yumi Hotta name famous even before Hikaru no Go. Although Yumi Hotta was in charge of the Hikaru no Go project, throughout most of the series Yumi Hotta and Kiyonari Hotta worked together as a husband-and-wife team.