Editing a Quest for Justice and Healing in “Black Box Diaries”

This post was written by Jay Kidd and originally appeared on the Frame.io blog on September 23rd, 2024.

It’s even rarer for that person to be a news intern with no political connections. But that’s exactly what happened to Shiori Itō, the subject and director of MTV’s new documentary, Black Box Diaries, due for release in October.

For five years, the young Japanese journalist documented her quest for justice after she was drugged and raped by Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a prominent TV journalist and friend of Shinzô Abe, the then-prime minister of Japan. Although Itō had a mountain of evidence on her side, the police claimed that her case against Yamaguchi was a dud. According to them, Itō’s assault existed within a “black box,” rendering it untouchable to prosecution and invisible to the world at large.

Amazingly, Itō kept up the fight. She began carefully archiving every moment of her struggle against Yamaguchi, assembling a patchwork of audio clips, surveillance videos, vlogs, and covert recordings about her assault. The result is Black Box Diaries, a documentary that examines Itō’s real-life court cases and confronts Japan’s shockingly draconian laws and social attitudes.

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For this installment of Made in Frame, we sat down with the editor of Black Box Diaries, Ema Ryan Yamazaki. Yamazaki chose Premiere Pro and Frame.io to help her sift through five years’ worth of Itō’s collected footage to craft this powerhouse of a documentary. We’ll look at why she chose those platforms and how Yamazaki had to grow as an editor to bring Itō’s remarkable story to life.

The black box

Shiori Itō’s story began in 2015 when, as a 25-year-old intern at Thomson Reuters, she met Noriyuki Yamaguchi at a restaurant for what she thought would be a job interview. That night ended with Itō blacking out and waking up in a hotel room with Yamaguchi assaulting her.

The next morning, Itō’s Sisyphean battle with the Japanese legal system began. Her allegations of rape were brushed aside. She was told that there was simply no way to hold Yamaguchi accountable. Her news colleagues also refused to print anything negative about the famous reporter, fearing that his connection to Shinzô Abe would get them blacklisted from Japan’s press clubs.

But Yamaguchi clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with. Instead of giving up, Itō turned into a super investigator. She began to secretly record her conversations, even getting a police officer, codenamed Investigator A, to feed her information about her case. Itō also tracked down the taxi driver who dropped her off at Yamaguchi’s hotel; he admitted that Itō was begging to be taken home the whole ride. But not even Itō’s network of witnesses and supporters could stand up to Yamaguchi’s powerful political connections. When Investigator A got removed from her case, it seemed like the truth would be buried for good.

Born three days apart

Ema Ryan Yamazaki joined Black Box Diaries in 2020. Born in Japan to a British father and a Japanese mother, she grew up feeling like a bit of an outsider.

“It didn’t matter if my Japanese was perfect,” Yamazaki tells me during a video call from her apartment in Tokyo. “I was only ever seen by some people as half-Japanese. That got frustrating as a young person. It was one of the reasons why I left.”

As a middle schooler, Yamazaki decided she wanted to become a filmmaker, and she ultimately left Japan to pursue a degree at NYU Tisch. Upon graduating, she began her career as an assistant editor, mentored by Peabody and Emmy Award-winning documentarian Sam Pollard. Her editing career blossomed and soon Yamazaki was editing for industry legends like Marc Levin and writing/directing/producing her first feature film, Monkey Business.

Then, in 2017, Yamazaki decided that she wanted to tell more stories about Japan. She returned to Tokyo to direct Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, a documentary about a high school baseball team trying to win Japan’s wildly popular national championship.

Yamazaki continued working in and out of Tokyo, eventually meeting Shiori Itō in 2019. Both women were running in similar circles, making documentaries in Japan, and they struck up a professional friendship. They quickly discovered they had a lot in common: they were the same age, born only three days apart, and both had lived in New York City and later returned to work in Japan.

Yamazaki also admired Itō’s photography. She hired Itō to work as a cinematographer on Temple Family, a short documentary for NHK. That collaboration in the summer and fall of 2020 allowed the two women’s relationship to develop. Afterwards, Itō felt comfortable enough to approach Yamazaki with an offer: Would she want to work on a documentary about her case against Yamaguchi?

Hundreds of hours of footage

Yamazaki wasn’t the only person Itō approached for Black Box Diaries. She also asked Yamazaki’s husband, Eric Nyari, to come aboard as a producer on the film. By this time, Yamazaki was a seasoned director, with multiple films and documentary series under her belt. But even an experienced pro like Yamazaki was shocked when Itō handed over five years’ worth of audio and video recordings.

“It was hundreds of hours of footage,” Yamazaki explains. “It took four or five months just to go through it all. A lot of it was audio-only, filmmaker friends filming Shiori, or iPhone videos that Shiori herself had recorded for protection.”

Yamazaki was stunned by some of the footage. Clip by clip, she watched her friend endure the harrowing process of reporting her rapist. She listened as Itō described a humiliating investigation where the police forced her to recreate her assault with a dummy, all while a male officer snapped photos. She also saw Itō’s paranoia increase from the constant surveillance posted outside her home. In one video, Itō’s only police contact, Investigator A, drunkenly came onto her as they were discussing her case. In another, Itō bravely chased down the police chief who had admitted to halting the arrest of her abuser. With a full camera crew at her side, Itō demanded an interview, which she was denied. Her investigation seemed to be falling apart at the seams.

The ten-hour cut

After watching all the footage and taking notes, Yamazaki began with a ten-hour cut of her friend’s experience. She put the case in chronological order using Adobe Premiere Pro for its easy-to-use timeline functions and its ability to process many different formats at once.

When it comes to editing, Yamazaki likes to keep it simple. “Technically, I rely on my assistant a lot,” she says. “All I need is a timeline. Tools are great, but I just need a way to put the movie together.”

All I need is a timeline. Tools are great, but I just need a way to put the movie together.

Yamazaki and her Tokyo-based team also used Premiere’s Frame.io integration to review and approve their VFX work, which was done in New York. Since many shots in Black Box Diaries featured legal documents, that information had to be blurred out for privacy. Frame.io let Yamazaki quickly and easily review and approve that VFX work and the stabilization needed to smooth out the shakiness of some of the lower-quality video formats used in the film.

“Using Frame.io to comment on the exact frame made the process very simple,” says Yamazaki. “That was a big help as we were dealing with a timezone difference and we had limited time to get the film finished.”

Levity and drama

To edit Black Box Diaries, Yamazaki says she had to intimately relive what her friend went through. She describes Itō’s journey as “horrific, but sometimes surprisingly funny. That’s because Shiori is a funny person… You just can’t write some of this stuff.”

It was important for Yamazaki to show all sides of Shiori, even her goofiest ones, so there’s a touch of absurdity in Black Box Diaries’ heaviness. In one scene, the documentary crew becomes convinced that someone has bugged Itō’s apartment. The producers purchase a listening device detector and are shocked when it begins to go off, apparently detecting a microphone behind every door, window, and wall. Eventually, after a lot of running around, they realize it is only Itō’s lavalier mic setting the detector off.

“There were so many moments like that,” recalls Yamazaki. “We tried to take some of the funny scenes out because we didn’t want the humor to distract from the drama, but it didn’t work. It’s just a part of Shiori’s life. She deflects with humor, even if she’s feeling depressed or scared.”

Dear diary

While editing, Yamazaki encountered an interesting problem: She was having difficulty navigating the perspective of the film. She didn’t want audiences to constantly question how Shiori Itō was directing the documentary while also being in it. How could she make it clear that Itō was both the director and the subject of Black Box Diaries?

It was a conundrum. The team experimented with several different ideas. At one point, Yamazaki says there was “an idea of Shiori swimming in the ocean, which was something she enjoyed doing. It was supposed to be a visual metaphor. We also tried some stop-motion scenes to express her inner thoughts, but they didn’t quite work.”

The answer came with the idea of diaries. While editing, Yamazaki noticed that Itō would always carry around a notebook to write down her feelings. She remembers, “One day, we were going through her diaries and we realized they could be a device. It was amazing how often the words in her diaries, in her handwriting, would match what was happening on screen.”

But there was another problem. Much of Black Box Diaries’ early footage was audio-only or shot in poor quality, leaving the team with no visuals to accompany their sound and narration. The solution came from Itō herself. Using the diary aesthetic as a guide, Itō began filming abstract moments that reminded her of how she felt when she was writing. Yamazaki paired one audio-only phone call with Investigator A to abstract shots of the curtains and lights around Itō’s apartment, because that is what Itō remembered looking at when she took the call. The result is personal, beautiful, and more evocative than any reenactment could ever be.

“Do we need a doctor on hand?”

The first cut of Black Box Diaries took the team a year to assemble and it taught Yamazaki a lot about working with a director who was also her own subject.

“I was learning all about Shiori,” Yamazaki tells me. “When she gets overwhelmed or stressed out, she takes a nap. I think that was a way of protecting herself so she could continue to function.”

But Yamazaki grew concerned when she realized Itō couldn’t remember filming some of the footage. In one diary-style video, Itō attempted to overdose on camera after apologizing to her parents. Itō told Yamazaki that she did not remember filming the scene or its aftermath, which caused Yamazaki to struggle with how to show it to Shiori in a cut.

Yamazaki wondered, “Do we need a doctor on hand? I just couldn’t imagine being Shiori and seeing this. It was so stressful. I knew that she liked to push herself, but I also knew there could be consequences later if she did too much.”

Working with Itō must have required a delicate touch. Viewers of Black Box Diaries can see how hard Shiori threw herself into solving her case. When she began chasing leads, she hardly seemed to think about anything else. Itō also didn’t appear to emotionally process her assault or her repeated roadblocks to justice. What looked like professionalism soon became Itō’s apparent attempt to wrench control out of something much bigger and more complicated than herself. Just like Yamazaki, viewers of Black Box Diaries may become worried about Shiori’s well-being.

Thankfully, Yamazaki’s worst fears did not come true. Itō responded well to the footage and went on direct from a place of honesty and professionalism. “When we showed Black Box Diaries to the producers they said, ‘this is going to be an incredible film’.”

Four years later…

Editing Black Box Diaries took four years, with some big breaks in between. Yamazaki went off to direct her own film, The Making of a Japanese, and Mariko Montpetit stepped in to fill her shoes. Itō and Montpetit explored different ways to express Itō’s inner struggles and some of those poetic ideas carried through to Yamazaki’s editing process when she returned to the film.

Also important to Black Box Diaries was consulting editor Maya Daisy Hawke. Hawke is a critically acclaimed editor in her own right, having cut 2023’s Oscar-winning documentary Navalny. Hawke gave many rounds of feedback as the film took shape and she joined Black Box Diaries for five intense days at the end of the editing process to get the doc into shape.

“Maya was integral to getting us to the finish line,” says Yamazaki. “She gave us incredible insight on how to examine every shot and question its significance.”

Test screenings and feedback

Editing a documentary like Black Box Diaries takes a lot of consideration. Yamazaki remembers how difficult it was to pace the film. According to her, the first cuts of Diaries had so many emotional moments that, by the climax, feedback audiences were simply too drained to be moved by the film. Yamazaki realized she had to figure out ways to pull back on some of Itō’s amazing footage so that the audience’s emotional fuel gauge wasn’t at zero during the film’s most powerful moments.

“Nothing was easy or natural about this process,” Yamazaki remembers. She struggled for a bit to find the rhythm and tone that would bring the main threads of Diaries together. There was the investigative element, Itō’s struggle to come to terms with her situation, and the progression of Itō having to turn inward and face herself. All three elements would need to be given equal weight for Diaries to work.

Nothing was easy or natural about this process.

“The first half of the film is about Shiori investigating her own case,” Yamazaki says. “There’s a lot of action. She’s trying to get information, run down the police, and win over the investigator. Of course, she’s always the victim of what happened, but she’s also a journalist chasing a story. Then there’s a moment when everything hits her. She realizes that her whole investigation was a way to deflect from facing her inner self. And it’s not pretty. It’s really hard.”

Emotional mapping

Itō’s big note for Yamazaki was, “There’s too much of me crying!” But Yamazaki appreciated her friend’s vulnerability, saying, “I think any emotion is appreciated. As an editor, I was thinking, ‘Oh, the subject is crying. That’s probably going to be a good moment in the film.’ And those moments each represent an emotional tier. What Shiori cries about in one scene is very different from what she cries about in another.”

“We had to map out her emotional ups and downs, which was a weird thing to do. It was strange to talk to a director, who was also the subject, and say, ‘I know you were down at that moment, but we’re going to cut it out because it’s too many downs. And over here, there are too many ups. We must consolidate so it feels like you only had one down and one up.’ It was a very weird thing to do.”

At first, Itō found it hard to think of her life as a collection of scenes in a film. Yamazaki felt protective of her friend too and had Itō leave the editing room when she was working on some of Diaries’ most sensitive moments. But that didn’t last for long. Eventually, Itō was able to watch Black Box Diaries over and over, and give impressive notes.

“We got to a point where Shiori could look at the heavy moments and say, ‘Let’s take a few seconds out of that,’” says Yamazaki. “It became a normal editing conversation. I think she did incredibly well. I could not imagine doing that myself.”

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Shifting viewpoints

Yamazaki still has a complicated relationship with her home country. As a child, she was frustrated by the people who thought that her British heritage made her “not Japanese enough.” But escaping to New York City made her realize that she may have taken some things about Japan for granted.

“There are things like people being on time,” Yamazaki explains with a smile. “There’s a general sense of decency in Japan. And the subway is clean. When I got to New York, I thought, ‘What is this?!’”

But working on Black Box Diaries seems to have changed Yamazaki’s opinion yet again. She says her eyes are now open to some of the worst aspects of Japanese society. She recalls one woman who told Itō that she was ashamed to share a gender with her. And there is also the fact that almost no major Japanese news outlet reported on Itō’s history-making press conference when she first accused Yamaguchi back in 2017.

“It made me question our freedom of speech,” Yamazaki says. “I mean, Japan is not like Russia, right? I can say whatever I want here. But there is a system or a social construct in Japan that makes it incredibly difficult to speak up. Shiori had to go public that way because she couldn’t get other journalists to report her story. And of course, the perpetrator was so powerful.”

#MeToo

Yamazaki was transitioning from New York back to Japan just as the MeToo movement was beginning in America. When she arrived in Tokyo, she was surprised to see that the majority in Japan still seemed to blame women for their sexual assaults. And if a woman came forward to challenge her assailant, she often did so alone.

Still, many people cite Shiori Itō as the catalyst for Japan’s MeToo movement. Her 2017 memoir, Black Box, prompted a reckoning over gender-based violence in Japan. And Itō’s various court cases have also emboldened victims to come forward against their abusers. Yamazaki believes this change is a testament to Itō’s strength. And she believes that most people in Japan now agree that the country should have treated her friend better.

But the pervasive attitude in Japan is to still sweep sexual assault under the rug. Yamazaki says that rape is “just not discussed. I think there must be a whole generation of women in this country who have experienced this and felt like they couldn’t talk about it. Now they’re mad. They’re saying, ‘Why do the younger women get to come forward when I couldn’t?’ I think it must come from them never being allowed to imagine that things could change.”

New case, old story

Yamazaki is currently following a new case against Hitoshi Matsumoto, who is arguably the most famous comedian currently working in Japan. Earlier this year, two women accused Matsumoto of forcing them into sexual activities at a private party back in 2015. He has denied everything and is suing the editor-in-chief of Shukan Bunshun, the magazine that published the allegations against him.

However, Yamazaki believes that Itō’s case has caused a great societal shift in Japan. She notes that there is less hostility around this new case, and people generally seem more open to believing the female victims. She also says that Matsumoto’s case has caused renewed interest in Shiori’s story, and even more people will be talking about it after MTV Docs officially releases Black Box Diaries later this October.

“I think Shirori has a lot more support now,” Yamazaki says. “She will be going down in the Japanese history books.”

You can follow Black Box Diaries on Instagram to find festival screenings near you. The doc will also be showing at The Film Forum in NYC on October 25th.