Ike's career was launched with the fourth entry in Toei's Hot Springs Geisha series, Hot Springs Mimizu Geisha (1971). A media frenzy erupted following the release of this film when Ike claimed to have lied about her age to gain a part in the movie. Claiming to have in fact been sixteen years of age when she starred in this softcore sex film, Ike caused a scandal. The publicity only served to make the film one of Toei's most profitable films of the 1970s.

In her third film, director Norifumi Suzuki's Modern Porno Tale: Inherited Sex Mania (1971), Ike co-starred with French erotic actress, Sandra Julien. Eirin, the Japanese film-rating board, objected to the graphic lesbian scenes between the two actresses, and this film had to be severely cut before it could be released theatrically. Ike decided to stop performing in nude scenes after this film, concentrating instead on films in the delinquent girl sub-genre of S&M films. Ike starred in five of Toei's seven Sukeban (delinquent schoolgirl) films made between 1971 and 1974. Patrick Macias describes this series as, "bare-chested, shotgun-packing chicks Miki Sugimoto and Ike Reiko getting into one catfight after another." She also starred in all four of Toei's Terror Female High School films made in 1972 and 1973. Ike's later films would include appearances in Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity series and Graveyard of Honor, and the second sequel to Sonny Chiba's The Street Fighter.

Yuko Mihara Weisser calls Ike one of the "icons of Pinky Violence," and in a review of Sex and Fury (1973), DVDManiacs.net called Ike, "the very epitome [of] the cinematic bad girl, playing her role with a sense of collected cool and tough attitude that can rival that of even better known North American tough gals such as Tura Satana from Faster Pussycat… Kill! Kill! or Pam Grier in Foxy Brown."