Kanako Momota (百田 夏菜子, Momota Kanako, born July 12, 1994) is a Japanese idol singer. She is best known as the leader of the female idol group Momoiro Clover Z. Momota 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. As of 2013, she still lived near Hamamatsu Station with her parents and two brothers.

Momota 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. Momota'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 Momota won the audition and was subsequently signed to the agency's 3B Junior section, dedicated to training girls under 18 to become actresses.