A foremost poet, calligrapher and translator. Her uncle, Katsumi Ohara, was the editor-in-chief of magazines such as ' Manchu Koron ', and had a deep relationship with novelists such as Masuji Ibuse and Fumiko Hayashi .
Shiraishi returned to Japan at the age of 7, and began writing poetry in her teens, and belonged to Katsue Kitazono 's VOU group. In 1951, when she was a student at Waseda University's First Faculty of Letters,she published her poetry collection, Tamago no Furu Machi (Falling Egg City). For a time, she was married to film director Shinoda Masahiro. In 1960, she wrote Tora no Yugi (Tiger's Game), and in 1970 she won Mr. H Prize with Season of the Sacred Lust. She was invited for a year to stay at University of Iowa, which broadened her outlook. In 1978 she won the Mugen Prize with A Canoe Returns to the Future, and in 1982 wrote Sazoku. In 1997, she won the Takami Jun Prize , and the Yomiuri Literature Award (poetry category) for "Appearing Things " . In 1998, she received the imperial Medal with Purple Ribbon, and in 2003 received the Bansui Prize for "My Floating Mother, City”. In 2009, she won her second Yomiuri Prize for Literature (Essays and Travelogues category) for Landscapes of Poetry, Portraits of Poets. In 2010, she was awarded Serbia 's “Smederevo Golden Key Award”. In 2014, she received the Pioneer Prize in Modern Poetry by the Japan Modern Poetry Association at the Japan Poetry Festival.
Initially influenced by modernism and surrealism (Joao Miro and Salvador Dali), since the 1960s she turned to American beat poets and jazz (particularly John Coltrane). She has performed poetry readings at festivals in more than 30 countries. In the 1980s, she participated in the International Poetry Festival in Mexico and the Balshiki International Poetry Festival in India.
Her diverse work includes romance essays, picture books, photo collections, and translations for women. She was considered a radical "feminist" in the 1970s. With the advent of the “scholarly feminist'' after that her influence faded, but it was Shiraishi who introduced Ueno Chizuko's beloved ceramist Niki de Saint Phalle to Japan.
Shiraishi had a close relationships with Mishima Yukio, Mori Mariko, and Terayama Shuji. The poet Kenneth Rexroth, one of the English translators of Season of the Sacred Lust, and author of the book preface, called Shiraishi "Japan's Allen Ginsberg." Her poetry has been translated in 20 languages, recently "Sea, Land, Shadow" translated to English in 2017.