Mitsuru Meike

Mitsuru Meike's introduction to the film industry was as assistant director to prominent female pink film director Sachi Hamano.[3] He later worked at Outcast Produce with Toshiya Ueno and under the mentorship of "Four Heavenly Kings of Pink" (ピンク四天王, pinku shitenno) director, Toshiki Satō, whom he served as assistant director beginning in 1992.[1][3] Meike's directorial debut was with the V-cinema film, Confinement (監禁, Kankin) (1996).[1][3] He made his theatrical directorial debut in 1997 with Shintōhō Eiga's Lascivious Nurse Uniform Diary: Two or Three Times, While I'm Wet for which he won the Best New Director prize at the Pink Grand Prix.[4][5] His 2002 film Shameful Family: Pin Down Technique won Meike the Best Director title, and was named the fifth best pink release of the year at the Pink Grand Prix.[6]

Meike is one of the most experimental and daring of the shichifukujin directors.[3] His 2003 film The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai concerns a call-girl who becomes a super-genius after she is inadvertently shot by a North Korean in negotiations with a Middle Eastern man in a coffee shop. A frantic search for a rubber model of George W. Bush's finger, capable of releasing the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal, ensues.[7] The film became a surprise international hit, playing at 20 film festivals and having a theatrical release in the U.S. in 2006.[8]