Middleburg Interview: Shiori Ito of “Black Box Diaries”

Japanese director Shiori Ito makes her feature debut with the documentary Black Box Diaries, which chronicles her long struggle to obtain justice for her 2015 rape at the hands of one her country’s most prominent journalists, Noriyuki Yamaguchi. Following the 2017 publication of her book, Black Box, Ito became the face of Japan’s MeToo movement, providing inspiration to legions of women as they saw their own battles for respect and safety reflected in her journey. I reviewed the film out of the 2024 Middleburg Film Festival, and shortly after that event’s conclusion, I spoke with Ito over Zoom. Here now is that conversation, edited for length and clarity. Ito’s English is very good, but I have occasionally altered her wording to better fit into American idioms, in addition to other editing I have done to shorten the interview.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed: At what point did you decide that the secret tapes and video diaries you had been making, partly as a form of self-protection, could form the basis of a documentary?

Shiori Ito: I had an idea, but I never really formed the idea that I would really make my own documentary film. But after two years of trying to find out what happened, what was going on, and investigating my case and recording, the arrest warrant disappeared and the case was suddenly dropped. So I decided to go public to reopen the case—to ask to reopen the case—and ask other journalists to join and investigate, but it didn’t really happen, so I realized that this is something I could do by myself.

CLR: I’m truly sorry that the reason for your documentary had to be rooted in such personal trauma. So, you include in your film a lot of cutaways of the Tokyo cityscape. We often see shots of the city behind us. What were you going for, as a filmmaker, with this recurring visual of the cityscape?

SI: The cityscape was always my metaphor and mirror of the society of Japan and how I felt in it, often alone and dealing with my own investigation case. That footage is from later when I went back to places. Through reading back my own diaries, I started remembering where I was when I was writing or what I was thinking, what I was looking at, or when I had these phone calls, because some calls are just audio and we didn’t have visuals. So I started shooting visuals with my own camera. And I don’t know if we were able to create the effect, visually, but sometimes all these tall buildings were so suffocating for me, as I remembered the view from the investigation room, from the police station. This was very visually important for me to show.

CLR: That makes sense. So, there are times in the film when you’re speaking to the camera in Japanese and there are times when you’re speaking to the camera in English. Why sometimes one language and sometimes another?

SI: It was just because my friends were filming what was going on around me. They’ve been helping me to document. So the person who was filming in the beginning is originally from Sweden—living in London at that time—and she actually helped me to escape from Japan right after my press conference. And so I just had to communicate with her in English; that was the only reason. But then there were some video diaries where I later realized I was speaking in English.

One of the reasons is that I recently realized that growing up in Japan as a Japanese woman we are always told that we have to speak politely to older people, to men, and we have to speak the way women speak. So in that way, even right after I woke up during the assault, I only could tell the man, “Please stop,” instead of “Fuck off,” because I didn’t have the words to stop it, to stop the violence, and I didn’t have the words to also describe my emotions. In these diaries, I realized I’d been writing a lot in English because I guess I didn’t know how to describe everything in Japanese.

CLR: Again, I’m sorry that those decisions are rooted in personal trauma. Beyond the challenges in your life that you document so well in the film, did you face any particular cinematic challenges in making the movie? For example, how did you get the security footage of the fateful night at the hotel? That can’t have been easy, so start with that. How did you get it and then what other challenges did you face?

SI: It was extremely hard, but I’m a journalist, and also as a survivor I had access. But for privacy reasons, we did have to change some of the secret recordings, the voices, and sometimes blur some things to protect the whistleblowers. There were, therefore, some challenges.

Also, Hannah, my friend who helped me to escape to London, was filming in the beginning and she wasn’t a camera person. And we now laugh about how she filmed because it’s awful. Sometimes it’s out of focus, really weirdly filmed, so we call it the “Hannah effect.” But the Hannah effect worked perfectly, cinematically, because it’s real. So I now love it, but in the editing room I remember I was like always, “No, no, Hannah.” (laughs)

And then I also didn’t want to put any voiceover or my thoughts from the present; I wanted the audience to experience what was happening at the time. It didn’t feel fair to put my thoughts from now. Because I’m also a super different person today, so I really tried to make it as chronological as possible, but at the same time also use just really minimum information and diaries to unfold the story.

CLR: Interesting. How about that footage from the parliamentary floor that you cut to a few times? That’s some remarkable footage. Is that public access?

SI: Yes, the parliament discussion is available to the public. It’s not necessarily great quality of footage, but you can find it online.

CLR: Because that moment with Shinzo Abe on the floor was amazing. Were you really wiretapped in that scene when you and your friend are looking for mics?

SI: Everything that we could find is shown in the film. We tried to break off the switch box, but I didn’t know what to do. And then I just realized if they want to use any sort of technology, they can do it in any way. And I had nothing to hide, so I just decided to move on. But now I can just laugh about it. Maybe I was just paranoid, but at that time we felt sincerely scared.

CLR: How are things now for you in terms of the cases? I read that Yamaguchi countersued. What’s the legal status of the cases now?

SI: So the day Prime Minister Abe was shot and killed in 2022, two years ago, that same day the Supreme Court decided to release our case and put an end to it. So I won part of the countersuit that he did. In Japan, when someone countersues, it comes with the original court case; it’s not a separate one. I think it’s different here in the States. But the part where I suspected he drugged me failed, so I had to pay for that because I didn’t have proof. So for me it was a win. But for the countersuit, I lost just that part of it.

CLR: Looking back now, in terms of the way the legal cases went, do you think your book, Black Box, helped the legal cases? Obviously it brought to light these charges and you helped launch the Japanese MeToo movement, which is very important. But legally speaking, do you think it advanced your cases and allowed you to therefore succeed?

SI: In the end, because we won, yes, but usually when a criminal case is dropped or closed or you lose the criminal case, and then the civil-court case is extremely hard because the judge is always looking at what the procedure was in the previous case. But for me, what was most important about writing the book was the fact that the case was dropped in criminal court. I tried to access all the evidence and witnesses from the police, and all the documents I got from them were almost entirely blacked out. So for me to lay out on the table what witnesses we had and why this investigation happened, I had to speak up, I had to show how this happened and why it is so hard to investigate or even prosecute rape cases in Japan. So, yes, in one way I believe it helped, but I’m not sure how it really affected my case.

CLR: Well, I think there’s no question that the book and this movie are helpful to women at large, as is speaking up and speaking out. I hope that you know that and understand the important work you’ve done. How are you now? Are you still working as a journalist? I know you’ve been promoting this film, but what is your life like now?

SI: I’m literally living out of my suitcase right now. I don’t even know where I belong, where my home is this year, since I’ve been traveling with the film all year. I’ve been getting some small writing work in between, but it’s been hard for me to work. But this film took eight, nine years to make. Of course, I’ve been working as a journalist, as a writer and documentary filmmaker for TV, so I’ve always had side work to support me as I made this film, which is what keeps me going. And this is my first feature film, but I hope to make another one.

CLR: Well, I look forward to seeing that next one when you do. Black Box Diaries comes out on October 25th in the United States. Has it already come out in Japan?

SI: Unfortunately, no. We are trying our best because it’s my love letter to my sister, to Japan, and to all my friends living there, so hopefully it’s going to happen.

CLR: Well, I wish you good luck with that. Thank you so much for making the film, and thank you for talking to me. I found the film quite powerful and I am glad that so many other people are now going to get to see it.

Shiori Ito: Thank you for talking to me.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.