Representing nearly a decade-long effort to bring the man who sexually assaulted her to justice, filmmaker Shiori Itō’s Black Box Diaries is primarily a firsthand and (as the title would imply) nakedly confessional account of trauma and PTSD, and secondarily an indictment of the Japanese legal system which, in the film’s telling, has barely evolved since the early 1900s. The extent to which the film is successful then is very much in that order. Itō, at the time a journalist in her mid-20s, alleges that after having dinner with Noriyuki Yamaguchi (himself, an older and extremely well-connected journalist) about a potential job, she found herself unexpectedly intoxicated to the point of blacking out. When she came to, she was undressed in a hotel room, bleeding and bruised, with Yamaguchi on top of her; compounding her humiliation was his request (in her recollection) to keep her undergarments as a memento of the evening. Despite surveillance footage showing Itō being unable to walk under her own power, with Yamaguchi practically dragging her semi-conscious form through the hotel lobby, and the physical evidence on her person, we learn the Tokyo police department refused to press charges against her alleged attacker. The reasons for this the film sets out to prove are twofold: Japanese criminal law does not view an absence of consent as proof of rape, and Yamaguchi’s political connections, including a close friendship with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, insulated him from consequences.
Picking up the case in 2017, nearly two years after the assault, Itō alternates between treating the film as a first-person, video diary primarily delivered in English — MTV Films acquired the film after it premiered at this past winter’s Sundance, and the structure of the film will appear familiar to anyone who’s seen the True Life series which used to air on the network — and a series of surreptitiously recorded conversations with sources who refused to go on the record. Having waited years for the police to take action of some kind — even being told by a sympathetic investigator, who still refuses to speak out publicly lest he lose his job, that the chief of police intervened before an arrest warrant for Yamaguchi could be executed — Itō is forced with no other option than to bring a civil suit against her accused rapist. Her name and face now public — while it’s often customary for victims of sex crimes to conceal their identities, Itō refuses such niceties in order to demonstrate her lack of shame — the filmmaker must contend with mockery from a Japanese public that’s conditioned to view rape victims as opportunistic or promiscuous, as well as what she believes to be surveillance by the state. In a scene that faintly recalls The Conversation, Itō purchases a wiretap detector from an electronic store after coming to believe her apartment is being bugged, the results of which are inconclusive (once she starts taking apart a light switch, Itō realizes she can’t actually tell the difference between a radio transmitter and just regular old wiring).
That dichotomy, with the film alternating between searing emotional directness and what can occasionally feel like contrived urgency, encapsulates the relative strengths and weaknesses of Black Box Diaries. In a framing like this, with the entire film eventually becoming a protracted form of “he said, she said,” objectivity was never very likely, nor would it be especially constructive. While the vagaries and peculiarities of Japanese culture — it’s not relevant to Itō’s case but, for example, we learn the age of consent there is 13 — and Yamaguchi’s connection to the highest level of government lends the film some unique dimensions, the details of the case are depressingly universal in highlighting the way victims are frequently placed at a disadvantage. Simply filing the lawsuit for a relatively modest ¥11,000,000 (around $100,000) leads to Itō being countersued by Yamaguchi for the exponentially larger sum of ¥130,000,000. Further, even those who privately support her claims refuse to go on camera, let alone testify on her behalf (we also witness a rather chilling bit of archival footage where a parliamentary hearing is shut down at the mere invoking of Yamaguchi’s name, which lends some credence to Itō’s theory that Abe’s government is protecting him). However, the film leans heavily on inference rather than unearthing actual smoking guns (even the cronyism of the aforementioned parliament footage is, at best, implied), which can make it feel like the film is chasing its own tail in trying to prove the existence of a conspiracy.
And what are we to make of moments that seem staged for the cameras? In one instance, we observe Itō and a car full of her associates conducting a stakeout to question an elusive police official, which ultimately leads to a breathless foot chase running after his speeding vehicle in a non-confrontation as fruitless as it is predictable. Then there’s the question of what Itō elides through editing in her understandable desire to present herself in a more favorable light. While The Black Box Diaries concludes with Itō declaring victory after winning a jury verdict (even filming herself and a confidant dancing in the backseat of a car to Gloria Gaynor’s disco-era anthem “I Will Survive”), the film makes no mention of the successful countersuit brought against the filmmaker by Yamaguchi after she made unsubstantiated claims that he drugged her in her nonfiction book written about the ordeal. Nor does the film touch upon any of the lawsuits Itō subsequently filed against prominent social media users for “liking” tweets considered defamatory of her, which might not sit well with free speech absolutists or unduly complicate the image she presents of herself. Black Box Diaries is under no obligation to include every detail accumulated over a decade, but these are the sort of omissions that only emphasize the film’s lack of critical distance.
Rather, the film is far more valuable as a subjective document of the emotional wear and tear of Itō’s years-long fight for accountability. Treated like a pariah and forced to claw tooth and nail simply for basic facts to come to light, Black Box Diaries chronicles the steady deterioration of Itō’s spirit and the waves of catharsis at fleeting moments of vindication. Early scenes find Itō at her most defiant, telling the camera that she’s written into her will that were she to be found dead of an apparent suicide, that the police should investigate it as a murder as there’s no scenario where she would take her own life. And how that moment hangs over a later scene which shows her at her emotional lowest, reflecting on how the lawsuit has permanently altered the relationship with her parents (the most startling sequence in the film is a context-free edit that cuts from Shiori pouring her heart out to her filming her surroundings from a hospital bed, an IV drip attached to her arm; the implication being the strain of the situation has deteriorated her physical health as much as it has her mental well-being). We also note the cumulative effect of years worth of alleged allies (almost exclusively men) being unwilling to stand with her out of fear of reprisal and the sense of deliverance in Itō learning that the hotel doorman from that fateful evening will submit a corroborating statement in court. As the film progresses, Itō increasingly comes across like a symbol to the women of Japan, serving as a light in the darkness and signaling that victims needn’t cower in the shadows. Late in the film, while speaking to a room of female journalists, Itō depicts woman after woman speaking out on their own experiences and shared traumas while the film makes the concerted choice to shoot the assorted speakers from behind or otherwise obscured angles. The implication is clear: sometimes the scariest, and most powerful, gesture is simply to show one’s face.
DIRECTOR: Shiori Itō; DISTRIBUTOR: MTV Documentary Films; IN THEATERS: October 25; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 43 min.
