The face of the Japanese #MeToo movement speaks

There's a scene in Shiori Ito's searing documentary Black Box Diariesin which the director, who is also the subject of the film, tells a swarm of journalists that she attempted to file criminal charges against her rapist. Like many survivors of sexual violence forced into this ritual of public re-litigation, she is a model of what society expects from courageous women. Her face betrays no emotion and she wears the chaste uniform of the offended person: delicate earrings (Ito opts for pearls), a conservatively cut blouse (a black button down here) and little to no makeup (faint signs of blushing and a single swipe of eyeliner).

Ito's voice remains calm as he recounts the police's initial refusal to accept his victim's complaint and their arsenal of excuses: Sex crimes were difficult to investigate, they said; her rapist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, former head of the Tokyo Broadcasting System's Washington Bureau and friend of the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was too powerful a figure to scrutinize.

After a couple of months, the authorities abandoned Ito's case and the young woman, a journalist in her own right, decided to make it public. He held the aforementioned press conference in May 2017 and published a memoir five months later.

Ito's actions – a rare move in Japan, where fewer than 10% of rape victims report their cases – sparked a #MeToo moment in the country, forcing the nation to reckon with its attitudes towards sexual violence , its authors and its survivors.

Black Box Diaries, which opened on October 25 in the United States, chronicles Ito's attempts to obtain legal compensation. With its combination of diary iPhone videos, news reports, hotel security footage from the night of Ito's rape, and various audio recordings, the film is a visceral testimony to survival and recourse.

In its devastation and familiarity, Ito's debut film finds companionship among works that realize the power of survivor testimony.

An obvious one that comes to mind is He saidMaria Schrader's conventional dramatization of New York Times journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor's investigations into Harvey Weinstein. Schrader used the testimony in a striking way, using the actual recording of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez's meeting with Weinstein to shift the film's perspective and jolt viewers from the comforting pause of fictionalized narratives.

Another is Chanel Miller's 2019 memoir You know my name, in which Miller, who was assaulted by Stanford University athlete Brock Turner in 2015, claims her identity by the anonymous nickname Emily Doe. Like Ito, Miller's fiction finds galvanizing energy in self-revelation.

A more recent work is the thought-provoking work of director Lee Sunday Evans and actress Elizabeth Marvel The Ford/Hill project at the Public Theater in New York. That production, which recently concluded, interpolates the hearings of both Anita Hill, who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 to testify against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who sexually assaulted her, and Christine Blasey Ford, who appeared before the Supreme Court. same committee in 2018 after accusing then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.

The material power of the accused – conferred by a society more likely to side with the perpetrators of the crime than with the survivors of the attack – connects these works, which span different countries and years. Together, these women's stories form a soaring chorus of damning revelations, speaking to the difficulties survivors face when trying to tell the truth.

Most people in Ito's life begged her not to go public. Conversations with his family and one of the investigators from the aborted criminal case, some of which are included Black Box Diariesthey reveal the depths of fear that fuel a culture of silence in Japan. These people are worried about losing their jobs, tarnishing their reputations, and the threat of violence that could result from Ito subjecting himself to an unforgiving public.

However, the journalist, driven by the values ​​that led her to her profession, is forced to try. Ito approaches his case with the same rigor with which he would approach a news story. This method makes the document easy to follow for those unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese society while donating Black Box Diaries the propulsive pace of, ironically, a procedural.

Many scenes show Ito recording phone calls, taking numerous notes, and sitting in rooms surrounded by highlighted transcripts and evidence folders. As a filmmaker, he uses conversations with his editors, lawyers, and friends to explain why a criminal case was dropped, a civil case pursued, and the politics within Japanese society that complicated every step of his journey.

Anecdotes gleaned from clandestine meetings with an anonymous investigator highlight Yamaguchi's power. In one particularly engaging story, the investigator tells Ito that despite having an arrest warrant for the high-profile journalist, police chief Itaru Nakamura, who considers Yamaguchi a friend, decided not to.

The details of Ito's case, especially for audiences familiar with survivors' narratives, echo stories that have become more common since the height of the #MeToo movement. The callousness of investigators, the vile interrogation methods of police that seek to diminish the memory of survivors by insisting that the truth depends on the smallest details, and the vitriol of a misogynistic public are all on display in Black Box Diaries.

Where Ito's film stands out is in the diaristic iPhone videos, which serve as a mode of comparison for the director as subject. In these lucid and visceral confessions, the journalist Ito dissolves and the person Ito appears better.

They reveal the survivors' chronic isolation and give space to the private demons that emerge when they aren't required to mask their pain through calibrated clothing and firm intonations. They reappropriate the idea of ​​testimony, transforming it from a public act into an urgent and healing private act.