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Shiori Ito (director), Black Box Diaries, 2024. 102 min.

This review may contain spoilers.

In Bangkok, I went with a friend to see Black Box Diaries, directed by Shiori Ito, at Doc Club & Pub, an indie screening space in Sala Daeng. I did not know what to expect beforehand. My friend worried he’d always fall asleep in the cinema.

As the lights darkened, the low-ceilinged screening room turned into a black box. Ito’s words surfaced. For viewers who have been through different forms of sexual assault, close your eyes and take a breath, she said. Then we dive deep into the dark of the sexual assault case once followed by millions in East Asia.

In May 2017, journalist Shiori Ito alleged that she was intoxicated and raped in April 2015 at Sheraton Miyako Hotel in Tokyo by Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a prominent journalist and TV personality from Japan’s Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) network with close ties to former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Since then, Ito has brought her case before the criminal and later civil courts. In 2019, a final ruling was reached at the civil court that Ito was “forced to have sex without contraception, while in a state of unconsciousness and severe inebriation”, ordering Yamaguchi to pay ¥3.3 million compensation for the damages including continuous “flashbacks and panic attacks”.

What a largely victorious court ruling doesn’t tell, Ito shows them in Black Box Diaries—it is built up on an indefatigable collection of recordings and footage kept over the years of (self-)investigation (as a police case was dismissed for lack of evidence in 2016) and publication. From 25 to 33, she never stopped documenting the continuum of violence and denial beyond the act of rape itself.¹

Black Box Diaries is Ito’s demonstration that sexual violence is more than embodied harm or gender inequalities, but intersecting power and dominance. Bodies are merely the exercising ground of power, a sphere where the perpetrator can be any individual or force intended to control, exploit, or oppress. In the “black box” where Ito was assaulted by a perpetrator of much higher power (chief of TBS Washington Bureau, ties with former Prime Minister Abe), the abuse also arose from various sources that collectively created a bigger black box, more grotesque too, with the black box of the rape nestled within.

Japan’s outdated sex crimes law failed Ito. At the time of her lawsuit, it provided only three years of minimum prison term for those convicted of rape, required a complaint filed by a victim before prosecution for sexual crimes can occur, and set the age of consent at 13. 

Law enforcement failed Ito. Officials dismissed her file and disregarded evidence, attempting to smother her voice through dissuasion.

The female politician failed Ito. She reached out, to exploit her cause for political gain.

The investigator, “A”, failed Ito. In the process of gradually siding with Ito’s cause, he first showed courageous support despite the possibility of a career suicide, before in a drunken voice expressing his affection for her trauma-shaken skinny body and jokingly requesting a promise of courtship if helping Ito will cause his dismissal from the police force.

The Sheraton witness, a security guard on duty that night, did not fail her eventually. But he came much too late, with a latent saviour tone. He indicated to Ito it was lucky it’s him (someone who is willing to testify before the court in the end) on duty that night.

A section of the public failed Ito. They called her “the raped girl”. They sent her death threats. They thought her blouse opened too low at a press conference for rape allegations.

In a way even the civil court did not entirely back Ito, as in parallel to the compensation ordered from Yamaguchi to Ito, she was also ordered to pay ¥550,000 to Yamaguchi for defamation with her memoir accusing him of date rape drug with no evidence.

To any survivor, these black boxes can seem infinite and crushing. It is not difficult to spot in Black Box Diaries moments of defeatand fear for acute personal safety hazards, when Ito found her place bugged with wiretapping devices and herself followed for instance. But must survivors of sexual assaults be assigned a unitary profile of destruction and victimisation incapable of actions? Ito’s challenges that notion as a journalist, a presenter of her own case, and above all a courageous fighter against the patriarchal continuum of injustices.

^{Ito holding up a banner outside the courthouse announcing that the verdict of her case.}

Journalist Ito meticulously collects evidence, reaches out, and pushes for justice. Director Ito presents a sobering anatomy of sexual violence, its breeding ground, enablers, and on-lookers, even if doing these necessarily means exhuming memories of primary and secondary traumas. Fighter Ito Shiori marches on. “There’s no guarantee for my life,” but “ silence is not an option.”  She said “I’m still here.”

Ito speaks both Japanese and English in Black Box Diaries. In her autographic book, Black Box, she admits English provides an avenue out from restrictive gendered codes embedded in Japanese language and society. This distancing might have backed her rejection of ‘kind suggestions’ from even female family members to remain silent, while in parallel opening a new space for solidarity in the broader region and around the world.

Excerpts from the film showed Ito’s book and screening tours in China, leaving many audience members teary-eyed. When the civil court ruling came out in 2019, a picture of Ito holding a banner, “Victory”, in front of the building swept Chinese social media, hailed as a victory of justice over patriarchy prevalent in East Asia, a ray of hope. I remembered her blue and red chequered scarf. When Ito gets into the car on the day of final ruling wearing that scarf in the film, my throat tightens, not least because it’s a reassuring déjà, but also a reminder that China’s own Ito Shiori, Xianzi (Zhou Xiaoxuan), lost her appeal in the sexual harassment case against a high-profile TV personality in 2022.

When we walked out of the cinema, I told my friend I’m sceptical of the translation of “なぜですか” to “I don’t understand” instead of “Why is it so”. Almost crying, Ito asked investigator A that over the phone, after he coldly but strongly challenged her allegation in the beginning. She was probably caught in a heightened moment of helpless fury, and questioned why the system created her legal and political limbo in the face of power abuse. It’s more of her questioning than asking a question. He said he’s only sceptical of some shots of her silent falling tears, with sorrowful music.

I dispute it. The film records Ito’s tears, but as often her gestures and gaze of firm courage, her self-deprecating humour about the risks of speaking out, her laughter with friends over drinks. All traits of a very brave soul.

1. The continuum consists of: 1) the chain of denial from almost all relevant mechanisms and sectors Ito has encountered whilst seeking justice (as explained in the “xx failed Ito” paragraphs), 2) the impunity of the powerful, and 3) the blame and stigmatisation of the survivor. In this sense, it constitutes an ecology of violence that extends beyond the act of rape. ︎

How to cite: Xie, Peixuan. “Black Box Diaries: Documentation is a Political Action, Courage Too.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 26 Nov. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/11/26/black-box-diaries.

Peixuan Xie‘s research focuses on peace and conflict and she occasionally writes about other things. [Read all entries by Peixuan Xie.]