Person of Cultural Merit
Enchi was elected to the Japan Art Academy in 1970. She was made a Person of Cultural Merit in 1979, and was awarded the Order of Culture by the Japanese government in 1985 shortly before her death on November 12, 1986, of a heart attack, suffered while she was at a family event in 1986 at her home in the Yanaka neighborhood of Tokyo. Her grave is at the nearby Yanaka Cemetery. Few of Enchi's works have been translated out of Japanese.