is a Japanese manga artist. Hotta is best known as the author of the best-selling manga and anime series Hikaru no Go, which is widely credited for the late 90s-2000s boom of the game of go 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, and began the work under the title of , named for the nine "star points" on a go board. She later worked with Takeshi Obata (the illustrator) and Yukari Umezawa (5-Dan, the supervisor) in the creation of Hikaru no Go. She won the 2000 Shogakukan Manga Award and the 2003 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for Hikaru no Go. She also had a short manga series about long track speed skating that ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2005. 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 where he illustrated under the pen name . See also Go players References 1957 births Female comics writers Living people Japanese female comics artists Women manga artists Manga artists from Aichi Prefecture Japanese women writers