Shiori Ito’s Powerful Documentary Is a Compelling Must-See

In scrawled, neat handwriting, a title card encourages those who have experienced similar traumas that the director experienced to pause and take a breath. “This has helped me many times”, Shiori Itō admits, and while she clearly feels hers is an important story to tell, she knows it will not always be easy on her audience. Thus begins a powerful film that documents her multi-year journey to bring attention to the systemic issues in the Japanese justice system, along with telling the story of her own assault. It’s a story that is intensely personal yet reaches the highest levels of Japanese politics, making for a bold and powerful narrative of one woman’s fight to share her story.

What Is ‘Black Box Diaries’ About?

In the spring of 2015, Shiori Itō was a young and aspiring journalist. With strong fluency in English, the Japanese native was schooled in New York and had returned to her home country to begin a promising career in journalism. In April 2015, she met up with an immensely prominent journalist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, to discuss potential work opportunities. Yamaguchi, the Washington Bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting System, was also the close friend and personal biographer of then-Japanese president Shinzo Abe, making Yamaguchi immensely connected within Japan’s notoriously closed system of influence.

As security footage from that night shows, following the dinner, Yamaguchi’s driver brought Itō back to his hotel, dragging a clearly intoxicated and reticent passenger past the doorman up through the lobby, and into his room. In Itō’s telling, she was blacked out for that entire journey, only waking up to find him on top of her, pressing down on her abdomen, engaged in sex when she was in no capacity to provide consent.

Shiori Itō Fights Against Japan’s Outdated Justice System

Thus began a multi-year process, which Itō and others describe as a fight for justice in Japan, where Itō and others have been pushing back against the authorities, using a variety of tactics, including grassroots activism, online campaigns, and even civil disobedience. Thus began Itō’s journey to uncover the truth about Japan’s so-called “black box” of secrets and to expose the systemic issues at the heart of the Japanese justice system.

As Itō shares her story, she reveals a world of corruption and abuse, where the powerful are above the law, and where women are often silenced by shame, guilt, and fear. But Itō is not just a victim, she is also a survivor, and her story is one of hope and determination, as she struggles to make sense of the trauma she experienced and to reclaim her life.

Black Box Diaries arrives in theaters on October 25.