“Black Box Diaries,” a documentary about Shiori Ito’s fight against Japan’s patriarchal justice system, opens on Friday in the United States.
If there’s one question Shiori Ito hates, it’s “What’s next for you?”
Ms. Ito, 36, is a journalist who became the face of #MeToo in Japan when she went public with rape allegations against a well-known television correspondent after an encounter in a Tokyo hotel room nine years ago. She later won a civil suit against him.
Now, as she prepares for the American and British theatrical release on Friday of “Black Box Diaries,” a bracing documentary she directed about her experiences fighting against Japan’s patriarchal justice system, she is tiring of questions about how she plans to continue the fight against sexual violence.
“Are you going to be a politician? What are you going to do about it?” audiences — and journalists — frequently ask her after seeing the film. “I want to scream back, ‘What are you going to do about it?’” she said. “‘You watched it. Now it’s with you, you take it, it’s not me. I did everything I can do from my side. Don’t ask me anymore.’”
It’s the kind of defiance, unorthodox for a woman in Japan, that has made Ms. Ito, whose film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, a feminist hero in some circles and a punching bag in others.
Ms. Ito spoke during more than two hours of conversation over dinner in Fukuoka, in southern Japan, where she made a brief stop earlier this month between film festivals in Busan, South Korea, and Zurich. She described her emotional journey from despair at being betrayed by the police, prosecutors and the Japanese media to triumph when she performed a karaoke version of “I Will Survive” after the Sundance screening.
