“Black Box Diaries”, a woman against the Japanese patriarchy

Published on November 20, 2024 at 06:58. / Modified on November 20, 2024 at 08:08.

Sensation of the last Zurich Film Festival, where it was crowned best documentary and won the Audience Award, Black Box Diaries should definitely not remain a festival film. As Citizen Four by Laura Poitras 10 years ago (on the Edward Snowden affair and the revelation of illegal NSA surveillance), it is indeed a film which gives the impression of capturing a major change live, in this case the movement #MeToo. Too late? Except that this testimony was missing, made by a victim herself, whose fight coincided with the global outcry sparked by the Weinstein affair. And the fact that it comes to us from Japan, a powerful patriarchal bastion, only makes it stronger.

At 23, like any young journalist, Shiori Ito saw herself as part of documenting the world and others. But on April 4, 2015, following a job interview, her life changed and she became his main subject – for everyone else. Despite a memory blackout, she became convinced that she had been raped that night in a hotel room by Noriyuki Yamaguchi, an eminent older colleague, also a biographer and close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Usually, in these cases, a young woman remains silent: no chance of being heard. Except that as a professional truth seeker, she filed a complaint and started filming. Eight years of investigations, blockages, legal proceedings, discouragement and media agitation later, the case has still not been judged on its merits. But her fight made Shiori Ito the leading figure of the movement #MeToo in Japan, against a patriarchy that denies it outright.

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