A 2024 Oscar nominee for best documentary, Shiori Itô's Black Box Diaries documents one Japanese woman's quest for justice after a violent sexual assault. In her first-person feature, Itô uses cellphone video, phone and voice mail recordings, surveillance footage, clips from radio and television shows, and interviews to depict her experience.
Her sister warns that she'll be stigmatized if she goes public, not least since Yamaguchi, an older man, was Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) and a journalist with close ties to the police and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (Yamaguchi's biography of Abe was published around the same time Itô's criminal case was dismissed). How can she continue to work as a journalist when she can no longer operate under the radar and everyone sees her as a victim? Not least when it goes against Japanese norms for rape victims to remain silent. Itô feels she has no choice, since the police declined to take action.
Though the DNA evidence is insufficient, a taxi driver remembers that Yamaguchi carried Itô, then a 26-year-old Reuters intern, into a hotel, though she told the driver repeatedly she wanted to go home--security footage confirms his remembrance.
A radio talk show host doesn't mince words. "She should be choked," he states, a disturbing indication of the criticism she faces, so she leaves work, moves in with a friend, and pours her energies into a book, Black Box: The Memoir That Sparked Japan’s #MeToo Movement, which forms the basis of this documentary. In 2021, it would become available in an English translation.
As Itô pushes on, she finds that the police lied to her when they said they didn't have an arrest warrant for Yamaguchi. The first investigator tells her otherwise, but he was quickly replaced. Later, she shifts from a criminal to a civil case. For all the inaction, lies, and criticism, she meets with women in both official and unofficial capacities grateful for her willingness to share her story.
Then Yamaguchi sues Itô for damage to his reputation to the tune of 130 million yen--over $850,000 in US currency--a sum she could not possibly pay. In the end, she won damages to the tune of $30,000, and his countersuit was dismissed.
All told, Shiori Itô spent eight years in the pursuit of justice. Along the way, American news outlets, like NPR and The New York Times, picked up her story, and the prime minister, who insisted he didn't want to get involved, was assassinated in 2022. Though Itô's experience was specific to Japan, the ways in which powerful men abuse their positions remains a universal problem, though other victims, both in and outside of Japan, may have more options in the wake of her bravery and resilience.
What kind of film collection would this title be suitable for?
Shiori Itô's directorial debut would be suitable for Documentary, Asian/Japanese, International, and Women & Gender Studies collections in academic and public libraries.
What kind of film series would this narrative fit in?
Black Box Diaries would fit with a series on Oscar-nominated documentaries and Japanese history and culture.