Black Box Diaries
On April 4, 2015, 28 year-old journalist Shiori Itô was at a bar with Noriyuki Yamaguchi, the Washington Bureau Chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting System and good friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who insisted she return with him to his hotel despite her repeated attempts to have their cab driver drop her off at a train station. She passed out, and when she awoke she was being raped and had been brutalized. In a country where shame and antiquated laws resulted in less than 4% of cases being reported, Itô decided she had nothing to hide and gave a press conference which brought threats and slander raining down upon her. She carried on, becoming an activist and Japan's face of the subsequent #MeToo movement, writing about her fight in 'Black Box' and now documenting it "Black Box Diaries."
Laura's Review: B+
Writer/director Shiori Itô has put herself through hell trying to get justice for herself while calling attention to Japan's outdated sexual violence laws. Using confessional phone video, a camera crew, security camera footage and television news, Itô weaves together a personal story with far reaching implications. She didn't even attain the support of her own immediate family until winds began to shift in her favor.
She begins with the 2017 press conference her sister had advised her against ('I don't want you to show your face - you'll be stigmatized.') The reactions were swift, Shiori being deemed a slut because she'd left the top button of her blouse unbuttoned. She's called a honey trap, one commentator saying she 'should be choked.' The young woman loses her job, cannot go out and has to move.
Going back to the crime, she finds the cab driver from that night in 2015 who recalls being confused by the contradictory instructions he was being given, clearly having deferred to Yamaguchi but admitted that Itô had been asked to be let off at the subway 'two to three times.' We hear the police tell her she doesn't have any evidence to report the crime, until eventually 'Investigator A' begins to take her seriously. He goes so far as to get an arrest warrant, but while he awaits Yamaguchi's arrival at the airport, a call 'from on high' pulls him off the case. Itô is told he was doing such a good job, he was transferred, but while he insists his name not be divulged, 'Investigator A' stays in touch, clearly troubled and wishing to help her. During one drunken phone call, he even asks her to marry him.
Her lawyer will address Parliament, asking why the arrest was stopped, receiving the ludicrous reply that there can be 'no discussions of private citizens in public.' Itô and her team attempt to interview Tokyo's police chief, the man who called off Yamaguchi's arrest, but as she reaches for his car door handle, he accelerates down the street. She will lose her criminal case, an appeals court refusing to reopen it. Yamaguchi threatens anyone who writes about him as a criminal. The UN declares Japan's judicial system so bad it must change.
But Itô persists and we marvel at her strength even as she wavers (after telling people not to take any report of a suicide as truth, fearing a government assassination, she eventually tries just that, but thankfully does not succeed). She relates the night of the crime, telling us that she got Yamaguchi off her by saying she had to sue the bathroom and was horrified by the sight of a bleeding nipple and bruised arm - he grabbed her the minute she left her sanctuary and threw her back on the bed, later telling her that he 'liked' her and could see her working for him. As the event happened during cherry blossom time, she has been unable to enjoy it, one of several triggering events for her trauma. Procedural rape investigations of her time involved her having to recreate her experience with a life sized doll.
She publishes her book, keeping it under wraps until the last minute to avoid being shut down by Yamaguchi. She files a civil suit and eventually public opinion begins to turn in her favor. The doorman from the hotel who let she and Yamaguchi in that night contacts her and tells her he wanted to report the situation then but was stopped by the hotel and offers her his name to use in court. Women on the street treat her like a celebrity when they learn who she is. And talk about triggering - Itô covers Yamaguchi's press conference where he claims he too suffers from PTSD from the incident and that while he has regrets, says he did nothing illegal.
The way Itô chooses to tell her story means that some things are a bit muddled at the onset and she never does tell us what winning her civil suit brought her ($30,000 of $100,000 requested), but the woman who faced a 110 year old law which didn't even take consent into consideration has managed to get it changed for an entire nation of women.
Robin's Review: B
MTV Documentary Films released "Black Box Diaries" in NY on 10/25/24.
