Her short story Asa ga nido kuru (朝が二度くる, Morning Comes Twice a Day) was translated into English by Lawrence Rogers for the collection Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll.
[1] Her writing career began when she was 16 and won a poetry competition sponsored by the magazine Bungei Shunjū.
She soon began writing fiction and won the Prize for Young Female Authors in 1973 for her short story Aoi kage no itami wo (青い影の痛みを, The Pain of Blue Shadows).
She was also awarded the Hirabayashi Taiko Prize for short story Koe no Shoufu (声の娼婦, The Voice Prostitute).
[2] Inaba's short story Miru (海松), named after a type of seaweed commonly known as dead man's fingers, won the 2007 Yasunari Kawabata Prize for best short story.