REVIEW: Black Box Diaries [2024]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 102 minutes
Release Date: October 25th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: MTV Documentary Films
Director(s): Shiori Itô
Writer(s): Shiori Itô

All I want to do is talk about the truth.

More than just waiting to discover the final verdict in the civil trial against Noriyuki Yamaguchi, we’re waiting for the moment when Shiori Itô can no longer keep herself separate from the investigation she’s led. It’s a powerful moment of self-realization because the PTSD triggers can no longer be held at bay once the reality of uncovering the case’s truth shifts to the reality that she is the case. You must commend Itô for finding the strength to compartmentalize things and push forward to advocate for herself by treating the “victim” portion of her identity as a client to the “journalist” portion. No one else was willing to take that job for her. It’s why only 4% of rapes are reported in Japan. She needed to do it all.

Black Box Diaries isn’t therefore “based on the international bestseller Black Box” as the poster describes. Half the film takes place after her book was published. It’s instead another piece of the puzzle. Another document of Japan’s archaic justice system and Itô’s fight to expose it. That’s why no one else could tell this story but her. No one else knows the lengths she needed to go to uncover evidence when the police and government were working tirelessly to contain everything in their so-called impenetrable “black box” of secrecy. So, she hired herself as a private investigator to record everything, push boundaries, and ignore the fear that doing so put her at great risk. The only way to save herself was to speak out and the only way to honor her craft was to become the apparatus necessary to be heard.

It’s a devastating account that reveals the heroes (Investigator A and other witnesses willing to go on-the-record) and villains (the national press and Prime Minister Abe himself, a “close friend” of the accused) in short order and without ambiguity. To discover that an arrest warrant for Yamaguchi had been issued and quickly rescinded back in 2015, shortly after the crime, screams conspiracy. And then nothing? The police say there wasn’t enough evidence, so Itô finds more. Then they say it’s still not enough, so she does the unthinkable (this is prior to #MeToo) by coming forward via a press conference without hiding her identity two years later. Itô realized this was no longer just about her. It was about holding the nation accountable and ensuring future victims had a voice.

We see potential surveillance vans parked outside her apartment. We hear the abhorrent messages denigrating and slandering her. There are the long silent stares into the abyss when stress takes hold, the paranoid attempts to search for wiretapping technology where she slept, and the sobering awareness to write a will that stated she wasn’t suicidal and that a full investigation should be launched if she was found dead in a manner that seemed self-inflicted. Itô supplies us an unfettered look into what ends up being an eight-year battle—all the highs and lows. Those early days of treating it like a puzzle without an inkling of backing down and the later ones where a confrontation with her assailant could no longer be pushed out of her mind as an abstract future problem.

The juggling act is well composed with a bit of back and forth between 2015 and 2017 to better contextualize everything with the timeline of discovery (Itô has no memory between leaving the restaurant and discovering Yamaguchi on top of her in bed) rather than chronologically. It lets us understand her state of mind since we’re watching it through her eyes and ears. What were her emotions in that moment? Where does each new fact lead? The only part that confused me was a tearful testimonial that feels like a suicide note before cutting to the inside of a hospital room without any explanation of what occurred. Did she make an attempt? Did she check-in to ensure she wouldn’t? The film simply moves to a scene of Itô walking on the street without any additional insight.

Either way, the moment impacts the overall suspense and drama inherent to Itô’s war against the still pervasive patriarchal backbone of Japan as a nation and culture. It drives home that one cannot simply push away the physical and psychological damage done by rape and assume it will disappear. Yes, Itô is able to distract herself long enough to ensure her day in court, but the body’s need for grief and acknowledgment will eventually take hold. We watch it do exactly that throughout the film as the tide turns and the story shifts from her reportage to her victimhood. It’s why she admits this ordeal still isn’t over post-verdict. Because justice is merely one part of survival. Healing is the other.