You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in Japanese. (October 2024)Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:さくらももこ]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template{{Translated|ja|さくらももこ}} to thetalk page. For more guidance, seeWikipedia:Translation.

Miki Miura (三浦美紀,Miura Miki),^[2] known professionally asMomoko Sakura (さくら ももこ,Sakura Momoko) (May 8, 1965 – August 15, 2018)^[3][4] was aJapanesemanga artist. She was best known as the creator of the long-runningmangaChibi Maruko-chan.

Momoko Sakura was born on May 8, 1965. She was passively open about her private life, recounting anecdotes of events that she experienced in published essays. She voluntarily remained anonymous until her death.^[5][3]

Sakura made her debut as an artist in 1984^[6]. Her most well-known series,Chibi Maruko-chan, was first published inRibon 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. Ananime series based onChibi Maruko-chan aired from 1990 to 1992 while the current second series, which debuted in 1995, continues to this day.

Sakura also made the moresurrealfantasy seriesCoji-Coji, which ran from 1997 to 1999. She also worked withMarvelous Interactive on creating theDreamcast titleSakura Momoko Gekijō Coji-Coji, and withNintendo on creating theGame Boy Advance titleSakura Momoko no Ukiuki Carnival. In 2005, she designed the characters for theXbox 360 titleEvery Party.

Music has often appeared in the work of Sakura, from the references ofYellow Magic Orchestra in the early collections ofChibi Maruko-chan and the shout-outs toShibuya-kei in the surreal world ofCoji-Coji.^[7]

Momoko Sakura died frombreast cancer on August 15, 2018, at the age of 53.^[4] Before her death, she wrote lyrics about musicianKazuyoshi 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 theChibi Maruko-chan anime.^[8] She was survived by her second husband.^[9]

In 1989, she received theKodansha Manga Award in theShōjo category forChibi Maruko-chan.^[10]

• Momoko Sakura atAnime News Network's encyclopedia
• Momoko Sakura atIMDb
• Profile at The Ultimate Manga PageArchived 2011-06-04 at theWayback Machine

• 1965 births
• 2018 deaths
• Deaths from breast cancer in Japan
• Women manga artists
• Manga artists from Shizuoka (city)
• 20th-century Japanese writers
• 21st-century Japanese writers
• 20th-century Japanese women writers
• 21st-century Japanese women writers
• Japanese female comics writers
• Winner of Kodansha Manga Award (Shōjo)
• Japanese album-cover and concert-poster artists
• Japanese female comics artists
• Pseudonymous comics artists
• Pseudonymous women writers
• 20th-century pseudonymous writers
• 21st-century pseudonymous writers

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with Japanese-language sources (ja)
• CS1 uses Japanese-language script (ja)
• CS1 Japanese-language sources (ja)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Biography articles needing translation from Japanese Wikipedia
• Articles with hCards
• Pages using infobox person with deprecated parameters
• Articles containing Japanese-language text