Black Box Diaries: Filmmaker and sexual violence campaigner Shiori Ito can’t screen her film in Japan

There’s a scene about midway through documentary film Black Box Diaries, where two women are sweeping their apartment for electronic bugs.

Using handheld devices that resemble small baby monitors, they pass their hands over nooks and crannies all the while nervously laughing. In one way, it’s a deeply distressing act, having to check your home for hidden listening devices, but it’s also so absurd you can’t help but find it strange enough to chuckle.

One of the women is Japanese journalist and filmmaker Shiori Ito and Black Box Diaries is her documentary charting her experiences after she in 2015 accused Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a prominent TV journalist and friend of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, of rape.

The allegation sent shockwaves through Japanese society, a patriarchal culture that has traditionally shunned the public airing of such accusations, and whose rape laws were over a century old.

While Ito received support from some quarters including from other female journalists, she was subjected to intense criticism from fellow Japanese people, including many women. One person called her a sex worker because she had the top button undone on her shirt.

Her film is pieced together from footage she filmed contemporaneously, originally to document every step as she didn’t trust law enforcement to effectively investigate her case.

Her instincts weren’t wrong. Initially, the police wouldn’t even take her complaint and when it looked like Yamaguchi was to be arrested, the charges were dropped by Itaru Nakamura, the acting chief of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Nakamura was also a friend of Yamaguchi and Abe.

As Ito continued to speak publicly about her experience through the legal journey of pursuing Yamaguchi through the civil courts, Ito, to some, became the face of the MeToo movement in Japan.

It’s a label she doesn’t love. “If people say I’m the MeToo person from Japan, that means the movement is a failure because MeToo is not about one person speaking, right?” she told The Nightly. “It’s about solidarity, it’s about everyone speaking.”

Ito’s accusation against Yamaguchi, which she detailed in a press conference, happened more than a year before the MeToo movement kicked off in earnest, but with that collective of voices and stories, Ito has become part of a global community of women.

Black Box Diaries will screen twice at the Melbourne International Film Festival, opening this week, where she will be a guest at the event.

She also took her film to the Sundance Film Festival where, after the film and the Q&A session, someone played Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive over the sound system, and Ito grabbed the microphone and led an impromptu karaoke session.

“I just let go in that moment, and it was really fun,” she told The Nightly.

Previously, Ito had made TV or online documentaries and hadn’t had a chance to directly meet an audience. But after screenings for Black Box Diaries, she “can see people who just watched the film and sense the emotion from them”.

“I realised this experience is shared in a way, I could see everyone in a different light, they have experienced it or someone close to them have experienced it. It was a shocking realisation,” she said.

But the one place she can’t yet screen her deeply personal film is in Japan, where it does not yet have distribution.

“But whenever I come back to Japan, I start imagining how the film will be seen here, and if it will even be possible.

“Japan is a weird culture. We don’t have severe censorship like in some countries, but there is a lot of self-censorship. Organisations wouldn’t say ‘no’ so we don’t know (for certain why they won’t distribute it) but we guess that sexual violence is not an easy topic to deal with.”

She also suspected that Black Box Diaries’ questioning of power and Japan’s ruling party might have something to do with the reluctance from Japanese distributors.

“Our team are a little disappointed but we believe once we can have a good run outside of Japan, then they can’t turn their eyes down. So, hopefully, we’ll keep travelling outside of Japan and get more audiences engaged and we’ll be able to bring it back here.”

But the excitement of what sharing her work with her own country is tempered somewhat by a fear that persists, rising out of how she was treated when she first went public with her experience. There were online threats, trolls and even in-person hecklers.

That aforementioned bug-sweeping scene follows an incident in which it appeared Yamaguchi had been “tipped off” about what Ito and other journalists were doing to doorstop him.

As more years pass since the alleged rape, making and sharing the film has been part of Ito’s healing process. But the lasting effects of that trauma is still up-and-down and she admitted that it’s “easier” because she hasn’t had to go through of showing Black Box Diaries in Japan.

“That’s the most cautious place for me because I know how society is still,” she said. “I’m trying to get ready for that big wave of trolling coming towards me.

“I’m not sure if our society is ready for this but we shouldn’t wait any longer.”

That Ito needs to buttress herself emotionally as an almost pre-emptive self-defence mechanism shows that progress in Japan is slow. But it’s not non-existent. She said that the media are much more likely to cover stories and cases of sexual violence than previously, and they’re better able to talk about it.

As she’s travelled with her story, it gets a little bit easier with each retelling even if it’s still hard to do it over and over again.

“The truth is easier to say if you have a bigger voice, if you have a platform. When I was starting off in my career and I was still powerless, as a victim, I felt like I had no voice.

“Thinking back about how it all started to now, making this film, yeah, keep speaking up, keep talking about the truth, keep believing in your own truth and you’ll get somewhere.”

Black Box Diaries is screening at MIFF on August 13 and August 14 with Ito in attendance