She is known for titillating novels replete with interracial sex scenes, and has aroused a great deal of controversy in Japan; her works have been accused of "demonising female sexuality".
[3] Her books continued to receive a good popular reception and be made into movies; her 1990 Hug Me, Kiss Me was awarded the 22nd Ohya Non-fiction Prize in 1991.
[1] Ieda's later works continued her practice of touching on contentious themes; her 1991 book Yellow Cab, about the eponymous stereotype of Japanese women overseas who allegedly engaged in indiscriminate sex with foreigners, attracted a great deal of media attention in Japan, including two television documentaries by TV Asahi and Tokyo Broadcasting System.
Japanese women in New York also set up a protest group against the book, feeling that the stereotype had damaged their professional image; their activities, which were described as "Ieda-bashing" by one scholar studying the "yellow cab" phenomenon, resulted in a sharp decline in her literary reputation.
[7] Despite the negative attention she received for Yellow Cab, Ieda continued to produce popular works; her 1994 novel Women Who Slept with the Bubble was made into a series of movies, the newest of which, starring Yoko Mitsuya, was released in June 2007.