Hal Kitchen
Black Box Diaries is a documentary film which recounts one woman’s experience of sexual violence and I feel it is only appropriate to echo the text with which Shiori Ito begins her story:
I know there are countless numbers of you out there who have experienced sexual violence. Please be mindful of the triggers in this film. Close your eyes and take a deep breath if you need to. That has helped me many times.
In the Spring of 2015, the then 25-year-old Shiori Ito reached out to influential journalist Noriyuki Yamaguchi to discuss a potential posting to the political desk in Washington DC. She was surprised to meet him one-on-one in a restaurant and through her discomfort began to feel faint. She was then driven unconscious to a hotel where Yamaguchi dragged her through the foyer, up to a room and began to have sex with her unconscious body. Upon regaining consciousness Ito filed charges against Yamaguchi, however, the case was closed when Chief of Police Itaru Nakamura pulled the plug on Yamaguchi’s arrest, allegedly for lack of evidence, despite the warrant having already been issued. The fact that Yamaguchi was a close friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and was about to publish his biography had absolutely nothing to do with it.
As I write this about Black Box Diaries, the sentencing of the attackers of Gisele Pelicot is taking place. As a result, there has been much discussion of late of the courage and support required in order for the victims of sexual violence to waive their anonymity and discuss their case publicly. Less perhaps has been made of the necessity of such an act. Not all are able to do so, and it’s not mere internal fortitude that stops them. It takes more than one for a person to get away with rape, and it takes more than one to bring a rapist to justice. If you’re not getting the support you need from those around you, moments will come when your own momentum will fail and it may not be possible to get it back in time. Coming into high profile as a survivor of sexual violence makes you a target yes, but also a much needed role model for those just now thrust into the same situation themselves. As Ito says, once she’s gone public she cannot lose, or she risks becoming a cautionary tale.
It’s easy to feel disillusioned at the modest successes of the #MeToo movement and how little structural and cultural change has actually transpired. Black Box Diaries is a firsthand video document of one of the key cases that helped the #MeToo movement go worldwide, as Shiori Ito went public with her story after criminal proceedings against her attacker were dropped, writing and publishing a memoir about her long struggle to hold Yamaguchi to account, despite explicitly threatened legal action. Though we hope that individual symbolic victories are not the most we can hope for, Black Box Diaries shows us how hard won even those are, as Ito continued to fight her case in civil court. Naturally, Yamaguchi then tried to sue her for more than triple the amount.
In covering a documentary like this where the fact of the case are subject to litigation, we should bear in mind that Black Box Diaries presents only Ito’s point of view on the case, however persuasive it might be. The high court ruled in favor of Yamaguchi’s defamation case on the grounds that Ito accused him of drugging her, of which there was no evidence and no explicit mention in the film, although from her description of the case it really really sounds as if she was drugged, and the security footage that appears in the film does show him dragging a clearly semi conscious Ito out of his car and through the hotel lobby. The titular “black box” is derived from a phrase the detectives investigating her case kept using, referring to the truth as something sealed and inaccessible, as if to them, Ito’s rape is a kind of Schroedinger’s cat that both did and did not happen and cannot be verified since its her word against his. Again, on camera: her unable to walk, him pulling her along by the arm.
Similarly, in the case of a documentary like Black Box Diaries, the formal merits of the work are dictated more than ever by practical considerations. Ito was unable to film in the courtroom for one. Nonetheless, Ito’s skills as a journalist still come through, more than ever in her personal conduct throughout proceedings. Drawing on her experience as an investigative journalist, she remains casual and positive, even jovial, as if it’s just another scandal story she’s following and not her own upended life. However, as the day when she will face her attacker in civil court draws ever closer, the stress of the situation becomes more and more immediate and visceral and the trauma erupts in debilitating fashion. The cycle of distress, paranoia, determination and despair that Black Box Diaries depicts is all too familiar, as she is forced to leave her home for fear of stalkers, faces legal action for defamation and financial ruin if her case is not believed, even potentially sacrificing her relationship with her parents after her father asks her not to go public. All too often support is conditional, even from victims’ own families.
Even the act of making the documentary Black Box Diaries itself is a reckless act of defiance that she second guesses, wrestling with the fact that by going this public, those who have gone out of their way to help her case will be in more trouble than they bargained for. Conversely, she’s forced to reckon with the fact that those who do assist her may have impure motives. One of the film’s most jaw-dropping moments occurs when the investigator handling her case begins drunkenly hitting on her in between telling her how brave she is to stand up to men who view women as sex objects.
However, as is all too often the case, in life as in art, it is the moments that inspire hope that leave the deepest impact, and Black Box Diaries swings back and forth between hopeful determination and horrified dismay with unerring lightness and tact. It portrays a world where police will actively obstruct justice and flirt with rape victims while a hotel doorman will put his job on the line to see innocents vindicated. In being authored so directly by the woman at the center of this story, there’s no possibility of exploitation or misappropriation, unless you believe she has some other motive, which I very much don’t. After all, what is a journalist to do when she becomes the news herself…but report?
