His first major role was in Policeman's Diary (1955, Keisatsu Nikki), in which he played a young patrolman who challenges a police chief in a kendo (bamboo sword fighting) match.

"[3][8] Though he worked predominantly in comic action roles, Shishido also gained a tough-guy loner image in such films as Seijun Suzuki's Youth of the Beast, (1963) in which he played an ex-cop who infiltrates two rival yakuza gangs.

The film received only moderate success on its original release, due largely to poor promotion by Nikkatsu stemming from the studio's growing disaffection with Suzuki, which ended with the director's firing.

[3] Nikkatsu action movies began to lose favour through the late 1960s and production was scaled back resulting in fewer jobs for Shishido.

He also starred in Nikkatsu "new action" films such as the all-star vehicle Yakuza Bird of Passage:Bad Guys' Work (1969), with Akira Kobayashi and Tetsuya Watari, and Bloody Battle (1971).

In 1971, Shishido ended his contract and left the failing company,[3] which had transitioned into softcore roman porno ("romantic pornography") films in order to stay profitable.

[4] Joe Shishido continued to work in television and appeared in films for other studios such as the fifth installment of Toei's highly popular yakuza series Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Final Episode (1974).

Over the next 20 years, he focused predominately on television with occasional film appearances, including Exchange Students (1982), Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast (1986) and A Mature Woman (1994).