At the age of 27, Noda won Japan's most prestigious theatre accolade, the Kishida Prize for Drama for "Nokemono Kitarite" ("Descent of the Brutes"). Tickets to his plays became the hottest of all to get a hold of. Further pushed by Japan's economy, Yume no Yuminsha broke all kinds of records by drawing as much as 26,000 audience to a one-day event at which Noda staged his version of Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelungs" presented as a Stonehenge trilogy at the Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo.