Pink film Hiroki is one of several Japanese film directors who got their start in the Japanese softcore pornographic film genre of
pink film. He said in an interview that in the late 1970s when he wanted to get into directing, he wrote a script for a
pink film and brought it to the
Ōkura Eiga studio but they told him he needed to start as an assistant director. At this time he met prolific
pink film director
Genji Nakamura and during the next three years, Hiroki worked as an assistant director, editor, and manager for Nakamura's company Yū Pro. Hiroki made his first film as a director with
Sexual Abuse! Exposed Woman for
Million Film in 1982. His debut met with poor reviews and was "terrible" according to Hiroki and he went back to being an assistant director for a time. Hiroki's next excursion into directing, beginning in November 1983, was more successful, a trio of
homoerotic pink films for ENK, a new company with links to
Nikkatsu, which specialized in gay
pink film.
Our Season,
Our Generation and
Our Moment were frank depictions of the tribulations of gay couples in 1980s Japan. All three films starred veteran
pink film actor
Tōru Nakane and
Our Season, considered the best of the trio by the
pink film historians Thomas and Yuko Weisser, had a screenplay by future director
Rokurō Mochizuki. His most notorious works for Nakamura's Yū Pro were a series of brutal
S&M movies directed under the pseudonym Gō Ijūin (), which was also sometimes used by scriptwriter Hitoshi Ishikawa and Nakamura himself. According to Hiroki, using a pseudonym gave him greater freedom to describe S&M relationships in a new way. Also in 1986, Nikkatsu released Hiroki's creative but bizarrely titled Yū Pro production
SM Class: Accidental Urination promoted as "New wave S&M with a sense of humor". In October 1987, Hiroki directed pioneering
AV Idol Hitomi Kobayashi in the
pink film The True Self of Hitomi Kobayashi released by
Million Film and the next year supervised another early AV actress
Eri Kikuchi in
Eri Kikuchi: Huge Breasts released by Nikkatsu in January 1988. Hiroki also ventured into the
adult video (AV) world, directing for
Athena Eizou, a company founded by former
pink film director
Tadashi Yoyogi, with titles such as the August 1989 starring Mako Hyuga and the May 1990 video .
Into mainstream film Although Hiroki left the
pink film industry in the late 1980s, he continued to make films dealing with sexuality. Hiroki has said that he never changed his film making, but his later movies were aimed at a different audience. In May 1989 Hiroki with fellow directors
Masato Ishioka and Tadafumi Tomioka founded their own production company Heaven (). In November 1990, Hiroki directed a romance about modern young couples in Japan,
A Love Affair With Sawako for the
Shochiku company. This was followed by the erotic horror
V-cinema production
Sadistic City which took the Japanese Film Section Grand Prize for a video at the
Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. Hiroki's breakthrough into mainstream film, however, came with his 1994 feature
800 Two Lap Runners which looked at teenage heterosexual and homosexual relationships against a track and field background. The film opened at the
Berlin International Film Festival in February 1994 before being released in Japan in July 1994. It placed number 7 on the
Kinema Junpo's list of the ten best Japanese movies of 1994. Hiroki returned to his theme of the emotional and sexual lives of young adults in modern urban Japan in his June 1996 film
Midori about a high-school girl pretending to be ill in order to see her boyfriend. His 2000 work
Tokyo Trash Baby is an understated look at a lonely woman who goes through the garbage of the neighbor she is obsessed with looking for mementos.
Recognition Hiroki's 2003 film
Vibrator, based on the novel by
Mari Akasaka and starring
Nao Omori and
Shinobu Terajima, returned to his theme of alienated women. It was described by Tom Mes as "one of the bravest and most important films of recent years."
Vibrator won the Best Film award at the
25th Yokohama Film Festival in 2004 and Hiroki was named Best Director. The film was also widely seen overseas. He once again worked with actress
Shinobu Terajima on the 2005 film ''
It's Only Talk, returning to his concentration on the problems of modern city life in Japan. The film won Best Film Third Place at the 16th Japanese Professional Movie Awards (2006) and Hiroki was given a Special Award. Also during this period, Hiroki directed two character dramas with sexual themes, L'Amant
about a teenaged girl selling herself as a sex slave and M'', detailing the experiences of a housewife whose sexual experimentation leads to prostitution. Later films include
The Egoists, a romance film starring
Kengo Kora and
Anne Suzuki and
River, a film which was originally inspired by the
Akihabara massacre. His ensemble drama film,
Kabukicho Love Hotel, screened at the
2014 Toronto International Film Festival. ==Style and influences==