Black Box Diaries

In Japanese criminal law, rape is only recognised in court if it can be proven that physical violence was used; it is therefore excluded from a consensual clause. Against this backdrop of patriarchal abuses, journalist Shiori ITŌ has to assert herself. Based on a rape she experienced first-hand, she deals with her traumatic experience in a self-produced documentary film. The film illustrates the gruelling and exhausting path she had to take as a woman to fight against this backward loophole in the law and gain her rights. The impact this has on her and her personal environment is vividly portrayed in her debut film. ‘I'm not an activist, I'm not a figure, I'm not propaganda for anything,’ she says about her lonely fight for justice before the Japanese law.

Journalist Shiori ITŌ made her rape by a high-ranking journalist and close confidante of Prime Minister Abe public in 2017. In her documentary film about the case and her fight for justice, she tells how the investigation was obstructed from the ‘top’, how she was confronted with serious threats from conservative circles and how she had to assert herself against a hostile social environment in order to be heard. She uses film footage originally made for her protection and secret recordings of conversations with police and journalists. Her film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries. The moving documentary was also honoured at several other film festivals. Ema Ryan YAMAZAKI was responsible for editing the extensive material. Her own documentary How To Make A Japanese is the opening film at Japannual 2024.