Momoko Sakura (さくら ももこ) (8 – 15) was the pen name of a Japanese manga artist from Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture. She was best known as the creator of the long-running manga Chibi Maruko-chan.

Biography

Momoko Sakura was born on 8 May 1965. She was passively open about her private life, recounting anecdotes of events that she experienced in published essays. She did not publicize her real name. Sakura made her debut as an artist in 1984 . Her most well-known series, Chibi Maruko-chan, was first published in Ribon from 1986 to 1996, and continued in serialization until 2022. The series was based on her own childhood and was set in 1974 in suburban Japan. An anime series based on Chibi Maruko-chan aired from 1990 to 1992 while the current second series, which debuted in 1995, continues to this day. Sakura also made the more surreal fantasy series Coji-Coji, which ran from 1997 to 1999. She also worked with Marvelous Interactive on creating the Dreamcast title Sakura Momoko Gekijō Coji-Coji, and with Nintendo on creating the Game Boy Advance title Sakura Momoko no Ukiuki Carnival. In 2005, she designed the characters for the Xbox 360 title Every Party. Music has often appeared in the work of Sakura, from the references of Yellow Magic Orchestra in the early collections of Chibi Maruko-chan and the shout-outs to Shibuya-kei in the surreal world of Coji-Coji.

Death

Sakura died from breast cancer on August 15, 2018, at the age of 53. Before her death, she wrote lyrics about musician Kazuyoshi Saito for him to sing. Saito used these for his 2019 song "Itsumo no Fūkei" (いつもの風景), an ending theme of the Chibi Maruko-chan anime. She was survived by her second husband.

Awards

In 1989, she received the Kodansha Manga Award in the Shōjo category for Chibi Maruko-chan.