Shiori Itō’s Viral Sexual Assault Case Got Shut Down. She Made a Movie to Solve It

The final shot of Black Box Diaries—a searing documentary directed by its subject, Shiori Itō—seems, on its face, fairly routine. It’s a simple frame of Itō surrounded by fellow reporters, typing away at a Tokyo press conference for a public figure who has just been found liable for sexual misconduct. But as the conclusion of Black Box Diaries, this portrait could hardly carry more weight. The man making the statement, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, essentially calls Itō a liar before her peers in the media. She’s the woman who has successfully sued him, after almost five years of seeking justice for her claim that Yamaguchi raped her in a hotel room (a claim Yamaguchi denied).

“​​Being in the press conference, in the same room with him, was the greatest revenge,” Itō tells me over Zoom. “That moment was, for me, a really big victory, that I could stay there and let him know: I’m still there.”

It’s an ideal ending to Black Box Diaries. Itō’s presence in the same room as her alleged attacker affirms her singular courage, as someone who started taking on major figures in Japan before turning 30. It’s also an indicator of her prowess as a filmmaker—someone who knows how to wind her riveting, sometimes explosive, often devastating memoir toward a note of quiet, bittersweet triumph.

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This is the magic of Black Box Diaries. In the film, Itō cobbles together about a decade of footage and experiences and reports—including some of the rawest personal moments I’ve seen put on screen recently—to tell her own story of trauma, resilience, and dogged investigation. (The film is an extension of her 2017 book Black Box, which draws its title from a prosecutor who told Itō that the alleged assault was an unactionable “black box” because it occurred in private.)

When she started filming herself and her process, Itō didn’t know she would eventually turn that material into a movie. By the time she’d turned the camera off, she had the bones of a staggeringly intimate nonfiction legal thriller. She just had to figure out how to assemble them.

In 2015, after inquiring about an internship, a 25-year-old Itō was invited to dinner with Yamaguchi, a prominent broadcast journalist and the biographer of then Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. She blacked out after feeling lightheaded, she claimed, and when she woke up, she found herself in pain as Yamaguchi forced himself on top of her in a hotel room. She reported him, putting her case in the hands of a Japanese legal system whose sexual assault laws at the time were more than a century old—and against a web of elite figures in the country. Evidence quickly emerged to back up her accusation: The hotel’s security cameras showed Yamaguchi pulling her, seemingly barely conscious, out of a cab, and propping her up as he entered the building. The taxi driver told police that Itō had asked to be dropped off at a train station, but Yamaguchi convinced him to drive to the hotel instead.

Other proof would later surface, documented vérité-style in the film. Yet after a certain point, the investigation was mysteriously dropped. To this day, Itō doesn’t know how that happened. The possibility of a conspiracy among the powerful still hangs in the air.

In any case, Itō did not give up. She decided to go public in 2017, an extraordinary step for an alleged victim of assault in Japan, where anonymity is the overwhelming standard. She organized a news conference, outlined her claim of rape against Yamaguchi, and observed a press corps unequipped to meet the moment. “They were there when they couldn’t really cover it,” Itō says now. The film opens on the invasive, rapid snaps of photographers and shouts of a prying media; her profile skyrockets even as the case’s actual momentum remains stalled. Prosecutors confirm the same year that they will not pursue a criminal investigation, at which point Itō launches her own by filing a civil suit. “I realized that maybe I could do something about it,” she tells me.

The day before making her allegations public, Itō recorded her first iPhone video diary. She knew her life would never be the same. “It was for protective reasons,” she reveals now of why she began filming. “I felt like if something happened to me, maybe I could leave something behind.” The process of documenting her daily routine accelerated with the arrival of producer Hanna Aqvilin, who offered Itō safe harbor in London before traveling to Japan to partner with her on what remained, at the time, a rather amorphous documentary project.

One thing Itō knew: Even though she had no experience in movies, even though she was the movie’s subject, she needed to direct it herself. “Especially with sexual violence stories, there are amazing films I’ve watched, but it’s been always told in the third person,” Itō says. “I just wanted to be able to tell my own story from my own point of view—not just as a filmmaker, but as a survivor…. I wanted the audience to experience what was happening day by day. I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing.”

Itō captures the isolation of a woman stepping forward with her truth, only to meet resistance, hatred, and indifference. She constructs a rigorous procedural out of navigating a rigidly patriarchal system. At one point an investigator, who seems to finally be drawn to her side, abruptly—and with unsettling entitlement—tries to engage her romantically. Things like this happened so regularly that Itō often forgot about them until she edited the film. “I think it was too shocking,” she says. “It really resonates with other sexual violence cases, when you face up to and speak up against the power.”

If Itō’s meticulous investigation showcases a certain enduring bravery, the most palpable courage is reflected in the film itself. She films herself returning to the hotel where she says the assault took place, which she thought essential to confronting her case head-on; she could barely sleep for days after. She opens herself up to scrutiny and smear campaigns while also gradually inspiring thousands of other women. Most profoundly, the film includes a section in which Itō attempts to take her own life. She’d taken an iPhone video of the immediate aftermath, and had to watch it again while deciding whether to include it in the movie.

“I didn’t even remember filming that video—we discovered the footage one year into editing, when we just wanted to make sure nothing was left on my phone,” Itō says. “I didn’t want to show it to my parents. It was too emotional. I felt that it was not right to put it—but if this were someone else’s story, then I would put it.” With that reasoning, she chose to include it.

It feels strange to avoid spoiling recent true events, but the big breakthrough in Itō’s investigation feels worth preserving, at least in this space, before Black Box Diaries starts rolling out in theaters this weekend. Itō gets a phone call that dramatically shifts the case’s dynamics, blowing a good chunk of cinema’s great journalism thrillers out of the water. Her eyes fill with tears, the pieces of her lawsuit finally come into place, and a simple, humane gesture allows the narrative to reach a climax of justice. The narrative gets wrapped in such a tidy bow you’d suspect contrivance, were the events it documents not all somehow real.

On the same day in 2022 that the Supreme Court ruled in Itō’s favor, following an unsuccessful appeal by Yamaguchi, former prime minister Abe was shot and killed. “I felt like that was too obvious,” Itō says now with a quiet chuckle. She’s currently living in Berlin and, as we speak nearly a year after Black Box Diaries’ Sundance premiere, expresses continued nervousness as to how her movie will be received in Japan. It has not screened there and remains without distribution—notable, since it’s been the toast of the global documentary film circuit for months.

She’s not exactly a dissident filmmaker, but as Itō considers her home country’s impending response to the movie, you sense she understandably fears being received that way. “I can’t say much of what the power is, but I just have to keep questioning them until I get the answer,” she says. “I’m a bit scared…but I’m really lucky that I had the background of asking questions, seeking the truth. Because as just a survivor I don’t think I ever could’ve gotten there. I had protection, like a steeled mask, being a journalist. I could distance myself.”

Itō never thought of herself as a subject rather than a reporter. When asked about her transition over the past decade to public figure, she replies rather bluntly, “It’s horrible.” Her career as a journalist in Japan may not be recoverable, given the baggage. Attacks on the internet still regularly come her way. But Itō saw no other option. The final product of Black Box Diaries carries both seismic personal significance and political value. “I’m happy with what we achieved with this film and it’s what I had to do personally to overcome what happened to me,” she says. “I’m telling everyone: If you have a trauma, make a film—because it really helps.”