Akutagawa Prize
In 2006 Shibasaki won a MEXT Award for New Artists for "Sono machi no ima wa" ("Today, in that City"), which was then nominated in 2007 for the Akutagawa Prize, but did not win. In 2010 she won the Noma Literary New Face Prize for "Nete mo samete mo", a first-person story about a woman who falls in love, loses her boyfriend, then meets a man who looks identical to her disappeared boyfriend but acts completely differently. In 2014, after having her work nominated three more times for the Akutagawa Prize, Shibasaki finally won the 151st Akutagawa Prize for her novel "Haru no niwa" ("Spring Garden").