This review is part of our coverage of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The Pitch: “Close your eyes and take a deep breath if you need to.” This disclaimer, written in gentle cursive in the opening seconds of documentary Black Box Diaries, is journalist and filmmaker Shiori Ito’s empathetic content warning to her audience.
After all, the advice helped her during the process of making this film, a hard-hitting expose turned personal journal chronicling her journey to hold her alleged rapist Noriyuki Yamaguchi — a powerful journalist connected to then-president of Japan Shinzo Abe — to account. According to her, in 2015, Yamaguchi brought her to a hotel while intoxicated and sexually assaulted her; due to his high profile. she was encouraged not to come forward. (The doc points out that, in Japan, approximately 4% of rapes get reported to police.)
But in 2017, Ito chose to seek justice, applying her skills as a journalist to collect the evidence she needed to put forth a strong enough case against him. Black Box Diaries chronicles this journey, assembled from personal and archival footage, diary accounts, phone calls and recordings, and more, a comprehensive case against both her alleged rapist and the system that allows others like him to get away with it.
But What About Her Shirt Button? Ito’s film is a profoundly personal piece of cinematic journalism as we watch her struggle to build her case, assemble evidence, and navigate her allegations in the public eye. In the opening minutes, we’re treated to the push and pull between institutional gaslighting and investigative rigor: a police investigator warns her over the phone that it will be impossible to do anything about her case without any hard evidence, all while grainy surveillance footage of Yamaguchi escorting a clearly-incapacitated Ito into the hotel plays.
This dissonance plays out in multiple ways throughout the doc, as Ito gamely shows us the many ways that Japan’s laws and institutions — the police, the press, the public — worked to dismiss her claims or make it hard to advance her case. (Her press conference, in which she bravely comes forward with her allegations, makes the public question everything from her motives to the opened top button on her blouse.) Even friendly police investigators find themselves reassigned or have their careers put in jeopardy.
The Only Way to Protect Myself: Through it all, Ito cuts through the crime-doc procedures to turn the camera back towards herself: Like so many women who’ve been through this, she’s put under a great deal of strain, and seems open about her struggles. Granted, as the filmmaker, we likely see a sunnier, more uncomplicated version of her than may be the whole truth; no one is immune from self-editing. But it’s gratifying to see her pushing through her trauma, finding solidarity with older women who celebrate how much further she’s going than they could, and finding small moments of happiness to get through this experience.
If the #MeToo movement has taught us anything, it’s that the wheels of justice are slow to turn, especially for women who experience sexual assault at the hands of powerful, well-connected people. But while the United States has taken at least a few furtive steps towards addressing these wrongs, they feel like mighty leaps compared to Japan’s medieval rape laws — which hadn’t been updated in over a century.
With witness after witness, Ito sees a plurality of people who want to help, but will have to risk careers and social standing to do so. And the film’s best moments come when she captures those portraits in everyday bravery; a late-film phone conversation with the doorman on duty that night (“I’d like you to feel glad I was on duty that night”) is a real tearjerker.
The Verdict: The film’s title (and the book she wrote before filming this) come from a phrase investigators used on her about cases like these: They exist in a black box, opaque to all who dare try to look into it. The truth lies within, but it’s impossible to actually see what happened.
Ito’s efforts are a comprehensive and well-researched attempt to pry that box open and show its contents to the world. What’s more, it feels like her own system of healing — playing the skills she’s spent a career cultivating to solve her own crime. Thankfully, those instincts translate to her aptitude for documentary filmmaking, as well. It’s a brave, uncompromising debut.
Where to Watch: Black Box Diaries premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
