[6] She received the Tanizaki Prize in 2001 for her novel Sensei no kaban (The Briefcase or Strange Weather in Tokyo), a love story about a friendship and romance between a woman in her thirties and her former teacher, a man in his seventies.

[8] In 2014 the film Nishino Yukihiko no Koi to Bōken, based on Kawakami's 2003 novel of the same name and starring Yutaka Takenouchi and Machiko Ono, was released nationwide in Japan.

Suisei won the 66th Yomiuri Prize in 2015, with selection committee member Yōko Ogawa praising the book for expanding the horizon of literature.

[10] In 2016 Kawakami's book Ōkina tori ni sarawarenai yō (大きな鳥にさらわれないよう), a collection of 14 short stories published by Kodansha, won the 44th Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature.

Her writing has drawn comparisons to Lewis Carroll[13] and Banana Yoshimoto,[14] and she has cited Gabriel García Márquez and J. G. Ballard as influences.