How Shiori Itō confronted her powerful rapist and changed Japan forever

The night On April 3, 2015, Shiori Itō, an intern at Thomson Reuters, met Noriyuki Yamaguchi at a restaurant under the guise of a job interview. Yamaguchi, then the Washington bureau chief of the Tokyo Broadcasting System and a personal friend (and biographer) of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was a driving force in Japanese media and politics with the power to change her career. The last thing Itō remembers from that dinner is being violently ill in the bathroom. The next thing she remembers is waking up in a hotel room the next morning to be raped by Yamaguchi.

Itō documented her years-long journey to justice Black Box Calendars, an excellent new documentary bowing at this year's Sundance Film festival. To call it a herculean task would be a huge understatement. Itō, 25, was not only taking on a high-profile media personality nearly twice her age with ties to the prime minister, but also a legal system whose sex-crime laws had not changed since 1907 and were designed to protect the family honor more. rather than victims. According to the law, rape was defined as vaginal penetration. Victims had to prove that they had suffered physical injury by resisting their attacker. and the age of consent was 13. A survey conducted by Japan's Cabinet Office found that only 4% of rape victims reported their assaults to the police.

Black Box Calendars it is both a riveting account of heroism and journalism. We see Itō meeting with investigators and officials about her case, secretly recording their conversations (occasionally via a tiny tape recorder hidden in her bra). We hear phone conversations between Itō and the investigator, who initially refuses to accept her victim's account due to a lack of physical evidence and a single inconsistency in her account — that she claimed to have left the hotel at 5:30 am. instead of 5. :50 am. It takes her two weeks to convince the investigator to take her case seriously. When he does, the prosecutor needs even more convincing. Police film her re-enacting her rape with a life-size doll. It's such a demoralizing, blatantly unfair process that Itō breaks down several times on camera.

And then things get even weirder. We learn that the investigator on her case has been mysteriously transferred — the reason given: “because he was good at his job” — and a new investigator has been appointed. He meets the original investigator, capturing their date on a hidden camera, who says he was “suddenly thrown off the case.” He informs her that the police had an arrest warrant for Yamaguchi, brought it to Narita Airport with four police officers waiting in the car to arrest him, and then received an order from above saying, “Wait, stop the arrest.” (It just so happens that Yamaguchi's biography of Abe was published two weeks before the case was dismissed.)

With nowhere to turn, Itō goes public in May 2017 — and, despite her sister's advice, decides not to hide her face, typical of sexual assault accusers in Japan, because she says she has “nothing to hide. “

“The police initially refused to take my victim's report, stating that the current law makes it difficult to investigate sex crimes. And that Yamaguchi is a prominent figure, the head of the Tokyo broadcast system in Washington,” she says during her press conference. “Since the incident, I have focused as a journalist on the search for the truth. I had no choice… People need to know about the horror of rape and how deeply it affects one's life.”

Only one TV network in Japan is carrying the press conference and the newspapers barely mention it. He was then accused of being everything from a “honey trap” to using Yamaguchi to “advance her career” to “attacking the government.” She has been labeled a “whore” because one of the buttons on her shirt was open during the press conference. She notices a black van with tinted windows parked outside her house at all hours, forcing her to leave her apartment and stay with a friend. He screams at night and needs sleeping pills to rest.

When Itō learns that her criminal case will not be reopened in 2017, the camera captures her quietly crying. But she refuses to back down. It liberates Black boxher memoir of the incident and her difficulty reporting it, which is helping to ignite the #MeToo movement in Japan, but also leading to a flood of hate mail from men and women. He files a lawsuit against Yamaguchi for 11 million yen, or $100,000 (he counters with a lawsuit for 130 million yen, or $1,180,000, claiming damage to his reputation). And, in an incredible sequence, Itō can be seen chasing the head of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police down the street, banging on his car window as he speeds away.

The pressure almost consumes Itō. In a video diary addressed to her parents, she announces that she can no longer bear the pain and ends her life. The screen cuts to black. In the next scene, he wakes up in a hospital. He has survived the attempt and realizes that he must enlist.

And a soldier does. In December 2019, more than four years after she was raped, Itō won her civil case and was awarded 3.3 million yen ($30,000) plus additional damages, with the judge ruling that Yamaguchi raped Itō while she was unconscious. Itō is also forced to pay Yamaguchi 550,000 yen for accusing him of giving her a date-rape drug in her book without evidence. Itō's victory proves to be a defining moment in the Flower Demo movement, a social justice campaign protesting sexual violence against women.

In June 2023, the Japanese parliament passed a series of bills updating its sex crime laws for the first time in a century. The age of consent was raised from 13 to 16, taking inappropriate photos with hidden cameras was banned, and the definition of rape was expanded from “forcible sexual intercourse” to “non-consensual sexual intercourse” and now includes victims impaired by alcohol or drugs; who are coerced by someone in a position of authority and who are unable to express their refusal due to being in a state of shock.

Shiori Itō changed the world. And Black Box Calendars it's a monument to her determination and sacrifice, and one of the best documentaries you'll see all year.