Toho producer Masakatsu Kaneko was impressed with the script, which depicted an ambitious reporter involved in a kidnapping incident with a touch reminiscent of American films, and used it as the basis for Kiken na Eiyū (1957), directed by Hideo Suzuki and starring Shintarō Ishihara.

Sugawa re-teamed with producer Kaneko on his second film Yajū Shisu Beshi (1959), which was lauded as a Japanese answer to the French New Wave and starred Tatsuya Nakadai, who was in between shooting the second and third installments of Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition.

However, its original ending, in which the nihilistic protagonist escapes punishment for his crimes, sparked controversy when industry censorship organ Eirin and powerful Toho producer Sanezumi Fujimoto demanded that it be changed.

Sugawa reinvigorated the Toho New Action genre in the mid-70's with two frenetic Hiroshi Fujioka vehicles: Yajū-gari, in which feuding father-and-son cops take on a radical group who kidnap a company president; and Yajū Shisu Beshi: Fukushū no Mekanikku, a more violent and revenge-driven sequel to his own Yajū Shisu Beshi, which helped lay the foundations of Toho New Action.

The following year, he teamed up with Art Theatre Guild to produce and release an adaptation of Hisashi Inoue's play Nihonjin no Heso, but subsequently concentrated on writing and directing television series.