While working as a crew member on films such as
Sōgo Ishii's
August in the Water (1995), Shiraishi also made his own low-budget independent films:
Violent Men (1997), co-directed with Akihiro Kasai, won the Screenplay Award and the Cinematography Award at the 1998 Hiroshima Film Exhibition, and
The Wind Shall Blow (1998), co-directed with Futoshi Kondo, won the Runner-up Grand Prix at the 1999
Pia Film Festival. In the early 2000s, Shiraishi became involved in the production of
horror films. From 2002 to 2003, he directed several installments of the
Honto ni Atta! Noroi no Video series. He made his feature-length directorial debut with
Jurei the Movie: Kuro-Jurei (2004) and rose to prominence in Japan and abroad for his
pseudo-documentary style, which he utilized on films such as
Noroi (2005),
Occult (2009),
Cult (2013),
A Record of Sweet Murder (2014),
Welcome to the Occult Forest (2022), and
Aishiteru! (2022). In the mid-2010s, Shiraishi began directing more mainstream films such as
Sadako vs. Kayako (2016),
Funouhan (2018), and
Hell Girl (2019). His domestic popularity was enhanced by the
Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! series, which began as a video project in 2012 and takes the format of a psychic documentary like
Honto ni Atta! Noroi no Video. The series is said to be influenced by the works of
Daijiro Morohoshi, as opposed to the stereotypical characteristics of Japanese horror. The popularity of the series, and of Shiraishi himself, has grown especially on
Niconico, which periodically broadcasts the series and his other works. In 2016, Shiraishi published the book
Textbook of Fake Documentaries, which details his own methods for creating pseudo-documentaries. ==Artistry==