She embodied Iapan's #Me T00, but is ready to move on

FUKUOKA, Japan - If there is one question Shiori Ito bates, it is: "What's next for you?"

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The 35-year-old is a journalist who became the face of #Me Too 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 lawsuit against him.

Now, as she prepares for the American and British theatrical release of Black Box Diaries, a bracing documentary she directed about her experiences battling 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 any more."' It is the kind of defiance, unorthodox for a woman in Japan, that has made Ito - whose film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and opens exclusively at The Projector on Nov 7 - a feminist hero in some circles and a punching bag in others.

Ito spoke during more than two hours of conversation over dinner in Fukuoka in southern Japan, where she made a brief stop in October between film festivals in Busan 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 the 1978 song I Will Survive after the Sundance screening.

"I felt such a big release," Ito recalled. "I was like, 'This is it!', and we shared it."