Shiori Itō

is a Japanese journalist and filmmaker. Her work focuses on gender equality and human rights issues. Itō's activism led to her inclusion in the Time 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

Itō gained international attention after speaking out about her experience of rape, a case that became a landmark for the MeToo movement in Japan. In 2017, Itō published the memoir Black Box and in 2024 her documentary Black Box Diaries was released to critical acclaim, garnering a Peabody Award and a nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

Biography Shiori Itō was born in 1989, the first of three children. Her father worked in construction and her mother was a housewife. She began modeling at age 9. In high school, she did a homestay with a family in rural Kansas in the U.S. She intended to study journalism, and attended a junior college while saving money to study abroad.

Itō left Japan to study abroad in New York in 2012, where she majored in photography. She then transferred to Italy in 2013, and returned to New York in summer 2014, where she began an internship at the Nippon TV branch office there. She then returned to Japan, where she took up an internship at the Japanese branch of Reuters. In 2015, she interned at Thomson Reuters where she wrote a couple of columns on Japanese society. Itō is now a freelance journalist and filmmaker.

Litigation Sexual assault lawsuit

While interning at Thomson Reuters in 2015, Itō was at an izakaya (casual bar) in Ebisu, Shibuya with Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a prominent television journalist and acquaintance of the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. She was drugged and was taken back to the hotel where, she alleged, Yamaguchi raped her. Despite security footage from the hotel showing that Itō appeared to be incapacitated and needed Yamaguchi's assistance to cross the hotel lobby, he denied the allegation, saying that she had agreed to consensual intercourse.

Itō said her experience with Japan's legal system showed her that victims of sex crimes were undermined and ignored. She called for the Japanese parliament to update Japan's laws regarding rape, which were over a century old. Itō explained how she could not get information on which hospital provides rape kits without going through a preliminary interview in person. When she went to the police, she was discouraged from filing a report, and was informed her career would be ruined if she did. Itō was told she did not act like a victim and had to be interviewed by several officers, including one who made her re-enact the rape with a dummy while he took pictures. She has subsequently become the face of the Me Too movement in Japan.

Itō formally filed a civil suit against Yamaguchi in September 2017 for sexual assault in a hotel on 4 April 2015. Itō subsequently filed a complaint with the , but a September 2017 ruling did not charge Yamaguchi since "there was no common law basis to overturn." The top court upheld the lower court ruling ordering Yamaguchi to pay Itō ¥3.3 million in damages. The top court also ordered Itō to pay Yamaguchi ¥550,000 for defamation.

In 2017, Itō's memoir about the incident and her experiences that followed, Black Box, was published in Japanese. It was awarded the best journalism award by the Free Press Association of Japan in 2018.

Defamation lawsuit against Mio Sugita In August 2020, Itō sued Japanese lower house member Mio Sugita of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Itō alleged that Sugita clicked "like" on a number of Twitter tweets that defamed her character. The lawsuit described some 25 defamatory tweets against Itō that Sugita interacted with, which included "botched attempt at obtaining work/job through sexual advances",Refn|group="lower-alpha"|The original term used is . The High Court found that the "like" did express support for defamatory content against Ms. Itō and infringed on her dignity.Refn|Exact legal language being "infringement of emotional esteem" .

Awards Free Press Association of Japan- Freedom Of The Press Award (2018) for Black Box New York Festivals - silver award (2018) for directing Undercover Asia: Lonely Deaths Newsweek 100 Most Respected Japanese (2019) Time 100 (2020) for her activism Tokyo Docs "Short Documentary Showcase Excellent Film Award" (2020) for directing I Killed My Flowers One Young World "One Young World Journalist of the Year 2022" for positive social impact of her work Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film (2025).

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