She received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, a national honor recognizing her scientific contributions.
In 2008, Tsuneko Okazaki was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure. The available sources confirm the year of the honor, though not the exact presentation date.
This decoration is one of Japan’s important state honors, and its award to Okazaki reflected the national recognition of her scientific achievement and long service to research. By this point, her name was already inseparable from the discovery of the fragments that bear her and Reiji Okazaki’s name, a discovery that had become central to the study of DNA replication.
The award also carried broader historical meaning. It represented formal acknowledgment by the Japanese state of a woman whose career had broken academic barriers while contributing to a foundational scientific advance. In a field where women’s contributions were often minimized or delayed in recognition, the honor helped cement her place in the history of modern Japanese science.