Sakura Ishimoto

Ishimoto defeated Kanna Suzuki in the finals of the 3rd Yamada Women's Professional Challenge Cup [ja] in August 2017 to win her first tournament as a professional. She advanced to the finals of the same tournament the following year, but was unsuccessful in her attempt to repeat as tournament champion, losing to Saya Nakazawa.

Ishimoto was accepted into Japan Shogi Association (JSA) Kansai Branch's training group system. Although still only an amateur player, she defeated a number of women's shogi professionals in the preliminary rounds of the 3rd (2013) and 4th (2014) Women's Ōza [ja] tournaments. In 2016, she was promoted to Class B1 of the training group system when she was a 17-year-old third year senior high school student, thus meeting the criteria for the rank of provisional women's professional 3-kyū. She petitioned the JSA, with shogi professional Nobuo Mori [ja] as her sponsor, to be allowed to complete as a women's professional and was awarded the rank of 2-kyū and full professional status based upon her prior performance in the 2013 and 2014 Women's Oza tournaments.

In 2010, She finished runner up in the girl's division of the 4th Elementary School Student Girl's Meijin Tournament [ja] as well as in third place in the 3rd Elementary School Komehime Meijin [ja] tournaments as a sixth-grade elementary school student. Two years later in 2012, she won the girl's division of the 33rd All Japan Juniro High School Student Invitational Shogi Tournament [ja] as a second-year junior high school student.

Sakura Ishimoto (石本 さくら , Ishimoto Sakura, born January 27, 1999) is a Japanese women's professional shogi player ranked 1-dan.

Ishimoto was born on January 27, 1999, in Suita, Osaka Prefecture. She first became interested in shogi when she was a fourth-grade elementary school student after seeing some classmates playing the game. She decided that she wanted to learn how to play the game and started attending a local shogi school shortly thereafter.