Yumi Hotta

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Yumi Hotta (堀田 由美 Hotta Yumi; most often written as ほった ゆみ) is a manga author, born in Aichi Prefecture, Japan in 1957.

Hotta is best known as the writer for the best-selling Hikaru no Go, a manga about the game of Go 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 of GO with her father-in-law. She thought that it might be fun to create a manga based on this traditional board game, which was originally named "Kokonotsu no Hoshi." She later worked with Takeshi Obata (the illustrator) and Yukari Umezawa (5-Dan, the supervisor) in the creation of Hikaru no Go. In 2000, she won the Shogakukan Manga Prize and in 2003 won the Tezuka Award Winners Shinsei ("new hope") prize for Hikaru no Go.

Hotta's husband is Kiyonari Hotta, a manga artist known for manga about horse-racing. He was also well-known as a contributor to the Chunichi Shimbun where he illustrated under the pen name Yumi Hotta (ほった ゆみ Hotta Yumi), 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.