Sunny Seki

Sunny Seki is the author/illustrator of four Japanese children’s books: Yuko-chan and the Daruma Doll, which won awards from Paper Tigers and also from Creative Child Magazine; The Last Kappa of Old Japan; The Little Kokeshi Doll from Fukushima; and The Tale of the Lucky Cat, which won awards from NAPPA Parenting Publishing and Creative Child Magazine.

Born in Tokyo in 1947, Sunny graduated from Nihon Daigaku with a degree in Photography. He then came to the United States, where he studied illustration at Pasadena Art Center of Design. For the next 32 years he operated Sunny Seki Photography in Rosemead. Today he presents his books and other Japanese folktales at community events. In 2009 he was featured on The Disney Channel, a two-minute spot that can be viewed on YouTube.

Sunny and wife Judy have nine children, and they live in San Gabriel.

Sunny is also the teacher of a Southern California Japanese senryu poetry group. (Senryu has the 5-7-5 format of haiku, but is themed on humorous commentary of the human situation.) In 2007 he published Gardeners’ Pioneer Story, an account of the 100-year history of Japanese gardeners through the sensitive senryu poems created by this group of immigrants. In 2010 he published another annotated poetry collection, Hokubei Senryu Michi Shirube, sharing the journey of Japanese-Americans in North America.

In April of 2016, Sunny's story, Yuko-chan and the Daruma Doll, was beautifully choreographed and performed by Valley Dance Ensemble in Logan, Utah. Please enjoy the 3-minute video sampler on this page!

Sunny has been introduced on Los Angeles Japanese TV in different interviews. These can be viewed on his website.