There are two graphic disturbing scenes from the film titled “Black Box Diaries” that are anticipated to leave a mark in the memory of its viewers for a long time and the film has also recently been nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary Award. To begin with, footage from a security camera exhibits Shiori Itou, the writer, and director of the film, being highly intoxicated and dragged by a man. The footage was taken outside a hotel in the lobby while she was being taken to the sidewalk. The man is known to be Noriyuki Yamaguchi who is the chief of Tokyo’s Broadcast ‘’TBS’’ and a close friend of the police and allied with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In the end, the emotions of the court ruling upholding the Yamaguchi-damages award from Yamaguchi are so well demonstrated by Shiori Itou that one can feel them over a long period. Firstly, in a blatant show of happiness, she records her phone and replaces music with ‘’I Will Survive’’, portraying a wide range of emotions. Starting with Shiori Ito, at the end of “Queen Christina”, Greta Garbo’s face loses expressions as Ito’s does. Although our sympathy is on the side of a woman, we speculate closely to her feelings of the damage as coming up with the winning emotion proved to be difficult: relief, justification, victory, or even the sense that even a small lesson learned while seeking justice after getting raped would never redeem her.
Yamaguchi, in another inconclusive interview, ruefully accepts that while putting on the passive voice and insisting that “the unfortunate incident” of which he was a part did not break any laws, he raped an unconscious girl exactly what crime did he commit exactly? He goes on to sue the girl and calls it “defamation”.
This film is, just as the book Itô wrote considering her own experience, a loud cry of pain and incomprehension directed towards Yamaguchi’s media appearance and the Japanese law, culture, and media as a whole. It is one thing to be assaulted by another person. It is also unacceptable but for different reasons, to be left with no possibility of access to the legal system. Both actions belittle the worth, and even the identity, of the affected person. As a reference, Japan was ruled by a rape law that was applicable for 110 years during the period of this assault where it was required to first show proof of violence and had no comprehension of violence that was embedded in reluctance to sexual force.
Things like “There is no evidence,” she heard from the policeman. No signs of semen. There is his DNA on the woman’s bra. “But that proves nothing that he only touched it. Without evidence you are messed up,” she was warned. The police were not taking her case seriously, and at one point, they even said that it was impossible to do an investigation of sex crimes considering the status of operating laws. She later discovers that a warrant for her arrest was prepared and subsequently set aside and canceled. But I think a taxi driver told me that that evening she asked him to stop the car twice, after which Yamaguchi took her out of the taxi at the hotel.
And what is happening abroad, for instance, the #metoo movement after Harvey Weinstein’s abuse has helped her advocacy work.
“I came to understand how silenced our voices are,” So she, Itō decides to hold a press conference to recount her ordeal although she has been cautioned that the remarks will be ruthless. Another person warns her, ‘You will be stigmatized.’ There is one big reason: no matter how successful she is, that person is simply referred to as “that victim.” She is encouraged not to reveal her face. Her mother tells her that she will enjoy a more satisfactory life of marriage and kids should she remain discreet. Itō further elaborates that she received a message from a student who stated: “I do not mean harm by what I say. But even if what you are saying is the truth, I really pity the man you are accusing.”
So, the only way that Itō could alter the structure was to resort to her education as a journalist and declare her story beginning with a book which we see in the movie, and later the movie itself. “As a journalist, I was interested in uncovering the truth. I did not have other choices.” according to her statements, she does not even consider herself a victim but an ordinary person who is “sad and weak, to hide and be ashamed” as it seems to expect from her.
It does not ignore sequences during which the camera gets apparently jolted. Gradually That assurance and commitment are mirrored by a greater mastery. In the first part, she hardly looks serious, and sometimes giggles when uncomfortable instead of addressing the problem head-on. And then, in jest, the most ancient elements see most often at the haimishbat unexpectedly kind people back off and start crying. It is very subtle and intensely personal. In other expressions, from time to time, we see her Itō too, while it hoards her smartphone and talks to itself an inch near the wall. To a women’s group, she always asserts that the warmth they exude envelopes her in the manner a blanket would. And when the hotel’s janitor rather boldly says that he witnessed what took place when her husband, the member of the legion collapsed and dragged her into the lobby or I think she would want that wear both shares the last scene. They are far apart and he is unable to view her but when he repeats that, again, she ‘She’ reflexively bows her head in gratitude.
She desires that we witness her in her unguarded and pained state. However, the film is evidence of her self-determination. The film gets its title from a lawyer who explains the lack of evidence in the ancient male-dominated description of crime incorporated in the laws that are more than a century old. A more appropriate approach would perhaps be to consider this movie as the black box of an airplane accident, which unearths critical data about the crash. Like that black box, Itô’s resolve to be self-expressive in her survivor and journalist story is the fundamental truth that cannot be abolished remaining among the wrecks of tragedy.
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