Black Box is the autobiographical documentary about a Japanese journalist, Shiori Ito. The core chapters describe her traumatic experience: a premeditated violent drug-rape. She was unconscious and had no memory because she was drugged. The police didn’t help. News media looked the other way. And government officials obstructed police investigation to spare just one male reporter whom she accused. Fear, agony, despair. Very contemporary storyline. Black Box soon became a bestselling book, and the author quickly turned into an award-winning journalist. But there was just one catch: she had no evidence whatsoever proving that the core story in her documentary book was real.The author, Shiori Ito, had filed a civil suit before releasing the book. After all, the civil court (Tokyo, Japan) ordered the author to pay damages to the male reporter for defamation, finding that the drug-rape story in Black Box was not real. In law, her Black Box story is not a real account but a narrative. The following is a review of the key contents of Black Box, focusing on legal concerns. The author had already submitted the book (Japanese version) as Plaintiff Exhibit to the court.The civil trial, in her country, generally goes through 3 stages: district court, high court, Supreme Court. Appealing to a higher court is not particularly difficult when assisted by lawyer. December 2019, the District Court delivered the first ruling which seemed overwhelmingly compassionate with the author (plaintiff): a scene in her latest feature film. Many readers took it that the drug-rape thing in Black Box was a true event because the author won the case. But they did not understand that the trial was not over yet and that who was not telling the truth in the first place. And this first ruling was almost entirely revised in the Second Instance (second stage) by the Tokyo High Court. Her civil trial lasted till July 2022, when the Supreme Court upheld the 2nd ruling by the High Court which turned down the 1st ruling by the District Court. Therefore, the Tokyo High Court decisions became the final verdict.In January 2022, the Tokyo High Court questioned the credibility of the core accounts of her 2017 accusation. In Black Box (paperback, Plaintiff Exhibit), she had accused him of premeditated violent drug-rape (see Page 37). The Court, for the first time, acknowledged the credibility of her medical data, casting grave suspicion not on the male reporter but on the author, Shiori Ito. The time frame of normal sexual intercourse she voluntarily stated at a clinic on the day of the incident differed from her own testimony on hostile intercourse by 3 hours (see Pages 42, 48). But it matched the time frame of friendly sexual intercourse the male reporter voluntarily stated at the police. The Court failed to find any evidence of use or administration of date-rape drug (see Page 52). Her 6-hour complete amnesic and unconscious state became an incredulous narrative (see Page 33). And the judiciary did not concede that some government conspiracy or cover-up was behind either the handling of arrest warrant or the conduct of criminal investigation (see Page 213).The Tokyo High Court ordered the author, Shiori Ito, to pay damages to the male reporter for defamation, finding that the drug-rape story in Black Box did not hold any more. But the same Court also ordered the male reporter to pay. The judge (3 judges) concluded that an unlawful but accidental non-consensual act of intercourse, instead of rape, occurred in that hotel room. But none of the judges could ever overturn the simple but hard fact that the very verdict outright contradicted other forensic evidence too. Besides, never once in Black Box (paperback, Plaintiff Exhibit) did she state she experienced accidental non-consensual sexual intercourse in that hotel room. In other words, evidence showed that she was subjected neither to a premeditated violent drug rape nor to an unlawful accidental non-consensual act of intercourse. What she claimed to have happened or what the court judge guessed to have happened did not happen in that hotel room. The judge never explained why. She did not explain, either. And readers of Black Box were appalled, realizing who was not telling the truth all along. Many, in the industry or not, came to shy away from talking about her. Things became quiet. She had already left the country.In January 2024, almost a year ago, Shiori Ito, as a movie director, was at a world-renowned film festival held in Park City, Utah. With a big smile on her face, she was telling the American audience about the story of a girl who successfully turned into a renowned “Survivor”. This time, however, some were already aware who was not telling the truth. Or so it seemed.