Kanako Momota


Kanako Momota is a Japanese idol actress and singer. She is best known as the leader of the female idol group Momoiro Clover Z. Kanako was ranked 12th most popular Japanese idol of 2013 by Nihon Keizai Shimbun. She is represented by Stardust Promotion talent agency.

Biography

Kanako Momota was born on July 12, 1994, in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan., she still lived near Hamamatsu Station with her parents and two brothers.
Kanako has been taking rhythmic gymnastics classes since the age of three, and jazz dance lessons since she was in the third grade of elementary school. She enrolled in dance classes at the suggestion of her coach, who thought she needed a better dance foundation. Other students at the dance school sometimes auditioned for the entertainment industry, a common topic of conversation among parents. Kanako's mother decided she should audition too and answered an advertisement announcing an open audition for the Stardust Promotion talent agency. They applied and when still in the fifth grade, Kanako won the audition and was subsequently signed to the agency's 3B Junior section, dedicated to training girls under 18 to become actresses.

Career

In the spring of 2008, Stardust Promotion put her in a then unnamed idol group consisting of girls close to Kanako's age. The project was very low budget, so they performed on the walkways in Yoyogi Park in Shibuya, Tokyo. A few months later, Kanako replaced Reni Takagi as group leader. In a later interview, Momoiro Clover's manager Akira Kawakami recalled that from the very beginning Kanako was the hardest worker and stated that she could be serious when needed, but naïve and spontaneous at the same time.
, Kanako officially takes center stage during all songs. Her performances incorporate elements of ballet, gymnastics, and acrobatics.
In 2011, Kanako appeared in Mika Ninagawa's cosplay photoshoot series in the fashion magazine Zipper dressed as a bee and a ladybug. She continued to appear as a model in Ninagawa's works in Mgirl magazine from Fall/Winter 2011/2012 and again in the issue from Spring/Summer 2013. On April 14, 2012, Kanako succeeded famous child actress Mana Ashida as subhost of the Nippon Television show Meringue no Kimochi. At that time, neither she nor Momoiro Clover Z was widely known. But when in 2013 it was announced that she would leave the program after almost a year and a half, there were worries that it would affect the popularity of the show. In August 2013, Kanako became the first person to appear on both the front and back covers of an issue of QuickJapan magazine, which also published a lengthy interview with her.

Shrimp jump

Kanako's trademark stunt is a "shrimp jump", which she performs during the song "Ikuze! Kaitō Shōjo" and which some consider a highlight of the group's live concerts. On October 4, 2013, she failed to land the jump and fell on her buttocks. The accident caused a stir among fans and was widely reported by the Japanese media, appearing at the top of Yahoo! Japan website. Kanako was not injured.

Filmography

Feature films