After one year studying Japanese literature at the Kyoto Women's University, she moved under pressure from her father to Tokyo to obtain a certificate as a dental hygienist and for medical training.
Following her completion of the requirements to take the state exam for medical practice, however, she instead entered the Department of French Literature at Meiji University, where she attended lectures by prominent Japanese post-war literary figures such as Mitsuo Nakamura, Kenji Yoshida, and Ken Hirano.
During her university years, Kurahashi was enthusiastically introduced to the body of modern literature, reading Rimbaud, Camus, Kafka, Blanchot, and Valéry.
While studying for her master's degree, Kurahashi made her literary debut in 1960 with the publication in the Meiji University literary magazine of the story The Party (パルタイ, Parutai), an acute satire on the communist left-wing sentiment commonplace among students at that time, as well as the bureaucratic dogmatism of the Japan Communist Party (JCP) (which was not named but strongly alluded to by the title).
[2] Historian Nick Kapur argues that the Parutai debate also reflected unspoken displeasure within the male-dominated Bundan that a critic as prominent as Hirano was promoting the work of a young female author, in their view at the expense of males.
Also in 1960, Kurahashi published the short novel End of Summer (夏の終り, Natsu no owari), which was also championed by Hirano and was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize.
Kurahashi's 1961 novel (in fact antinovel) Blue Journeys (暗い旅, Kuroi tabi), written in the formal second person, caused much controversy among critics and led Jun Etō to accuse her of plagiarism.