Breaking the Silence: Shiori Ito’s Fight for Justice
The journalist who ignited Japan’s #MeToo movement shares her journey to reform the country’s sexual assault laws in the documentary ‘Black Box Diaries.’
Photography by Takashi Homma
Fashion by Reina Ogawa Clarke
In 2015, Shiori Ito, then a 25-year-old up-and-coming journalist, met with Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a prominent TV journalist and a biographer of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a Tokyo bar to discuss an internship. While dining together, Ito remembers feeling dizzy and passing out in the restroom. By the end of the night, she told the police, Yamaguchi had taken her back to his hotel and raped her while she was unconscious. Despite video evidence and witness accounts, an arrest warrant was withdrawn.
In 2017, before a room of peers, Ito held a press conference in which she said she had been raped by one of their own. “How can I be a journalist if I can’t face the truth?” she asked. (Yamaguchi denied the charges, claiming the incident was consensual.)
I first encountered Ito in 2018 at a university panel discussing the deep-seated stigma against sexual assault victims in Japan. She spoke starkly about Japan’s daunting process for investigating sex crimes, which included a reenactment of the assault with a life-size doll, an ordeal she described as a “second rape.”
Since then, Ito’s courage has propelled significant legal changes in Japan. She won damages in a civil lawsuit against Yamaguchi in 2022, and although the #MeToo movement struggled to find its footing in Japan, her case influenced crucial amendments to the country’s century-old rape laws. These reforms included broadening the definition of rape to “nonconsensual sexual intercourse,” extending protections to male victims, broadening the statute of limitations and raising the age of consent from 13 to 16. Her story was the focus of the 2018 BBC documentary Japan’s Secret Shame, which underscored the limited impact of her fight within Japan. Now Ito is sharing her journey via her own lens, in her first feature-length documentary and directorial debut, Black Box Diaries, scheduled for a March 2025 release in France.
Why did you decide to make your own documentary, Black Box Diaries, years after going public with your experience?
SHIORI ITO The incident happened in 2015. For the first two years, until I went public, I was secretly recording my conversations with the police because I was slowly realizing that they weren’t doing their job. It wasn’t my intention to make a film – it was to protect myself. For the BBC, it was important to address how medieval Japan’s sexual assault laws are. I wanted to pressure Japan to change its laws – at the time, the rape law had been the same for 110 years. I tried to be an investigator more than the subject of the story because that was a way for me to survive, to have a bit of distance. But I didn’t let myself have time to be a victim because it was still so hard to accept the truth of what had happened to me. In this film, I had to be completely honest with myself – not just as a journalist, but as a daughter, a sister, a friend.
How did the Japanese media react after the press conference?
SI After I went public, only one TV station covered my case. Most of the major newspapers were silent. I felt like I just had to keep documenting what was going on since no other journalists were doing so, and I was the closest person to the story. But that also meant that I had to cross the line as a journalist. The first thing you learn in journalism is to have distance from the subject, but I had to investigate – there was only me. I realized I had to abandon my idea of keeping journalistic promises and tell myself it was okay to do a documentary in this form.
In Japanese media, the faces of rape victims are always blurred, and they are referred to as “Victim A” – you are always covered up and look like a criminal even though you’ve done nothing wrong. The idea is that you should be a person who is always sad and dark. I wanted to break that stereotype of victims.
You moved to London shortly after going public. Why did you feel like you had to leave Japan?
SI I couldn’t work or go out onto the street anymore after receiving so many threats. I didn’t even know how serious they were at the time. Once I stepped out of Japan, I felt so much freer. I felt empowered. Since all these online threats were in Japanese, putting myself in Japanese spaces felt very scary. I had lawyers asking me if I wanted to seek asylum in the U.K. because of what was going on. I remember asking, “Does that mean I could never go back to Japan again?” That felt a bit too extreme, but if I didn’t leave Japan, I don’t think I could have written my book or made the film.
How has creating your film influenced your healing process?
Although there were many reports about me, I felt powerless in a way. My story was being told by others, but I felt like it didn’t have to be that way. Even if you are the victim in the middle of the story, you can make a film or write a book because you have the power to tell your own story. It has really helped me.
You have a U.S. distributor and a French distributor, but no Japanese distributor yet. What is the future of your film in Japan?
SI Touring the world to go to all of these festivals and meeting audiences is amazing, but I wish I could do something new. It’s affecting me to continue talking about my trauma over and over. But the reason why our team decided to travel is because we don’t have a distributor in Japan yet, and we believe that if we can create good buzz outside of Japan, they can’t ignore us. I strongly believe in storytelling, whether it’s news, film, fiction, nonfiction, music, whatever, because it has the power to push.
What have been some memorable audience interactions while touring your film?
SI In general, it’s surprising how many people are carrying similar traumas within themselves, or know someone close to them who are. One of the interesting encounters I had was with a Japanese woman in South Texas. She came to my screening and, afterward, told me to my face, “I actually didn’t believe you at first, but now, after seeing the film, I completely understand, and I’m so sorry that I was on the other side.” To start with, the fact that she came to my film even though she didn’t believe me! She told me that I was so brave.
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