Chiba Yoshinori started his career as one of ten employees at Gaga Corporation. In 2004, he produced Amemiya Keita's Zeiram as a company employee only to be reprimanded for being heavily over budget. His second chance came four years later with the boom in straight-to-video releases, producing films in-house for Miike Takashi (Fudoh: The New Generation), Sato Shimako (Wizard of Darkness), and Mochizuki Rokuro (Another Lonely Hitman). In 1998, after producing 60 films at Gaga, he started his own company, Media Suits, where he launched the careers of Inoue Yasuo (The Neighbor No. Thirteen), Yamaguchi Yudai (Battlefield Baseball), and Shimomura Yuji (Death Trace). In 2009, he created the Sushi Typhoon label at Nikkatsu, where he produced films by Iguchi Noboru (The Machine Girl), Nishimura Yoshihiro (Helldriver), and Sono Sion (Cold Fish). His recent films for Nikkatsu include The Mo Brothers' Killers, Sono's Tokyo Tribe, and Shiraishi Kazuya's Twisted Justice.

After working as an assistant director for Yukisada Isao, Inudo Isshin and Wakamatsu Koji, Shiraishi directed a low-budget, straight-to-video horror before made his directorial debut proper, the raw, uncompromising Lost Paradise in Tokyo. The independent film, about a real-estate agent, his mentally-disabled brother, and a prostitute who form an unlikely trio that fantasize about escaping to an imaginary island. Shiraishi's second feature, crime drama The Devil's Path is much larger in scope, tackling police incompetence, media ethics, and personal redemption. It stars Yamada Takayuki as a journalist investigating the lives of two serial killers who formed a partnership only for one to betray the other, initiating a cycle of revenge. Shiraishi's third feature is a natural (and major) next-step, tackling institutionalised corruption in Japan's police force in the anarchic Twisted Justice in which a wrestler-turned-cop starts dealing drugs so that he can import Russian guns that his bosses can report recovered on Hokkaido's streets.

This year's New York Asian Film Festival is awarding Japanese actor Ayano Go a Screen International Rising Star Award for his chameleon-like range as an actor, whether portraying long-haired students or demon assassins. In 2016, he is already emerging as Japan's hottest actor for roles including a Machiavellian fixer in Iwai Shunji's A Bride for Rip Van Winkle, the country's most corrupt cop in Shiraishi Kazuya's Twisted Justice, and as one of three suspects of a heinous crime in Lee Sang-il's upcoming murder-mystery Rage. Ayano's rise has been swift. He first burst into the Japanese film industry's consciousness in 2009 with a supporting role in Miike Takashi's school gang warfare franchise entry Crows II. He has since starred in a series of iconic films including Ninagawa Mika's Helter Skelter, Otomo Keishi's Rurouni Kenshin, Okita Shuichi's A Story of Yonosuke, Kitagawa Eriko's I Have to Buy New Shoes, and Oh Mipo's The Light Shines Only There. He is represented by TriStone Entertainment.