It's still early, so there isn't much out there to point you to, especially if you're holding a prejudice towards high art. The fans are way ahead of the scholars, so most of the information gathered so far has to do with animation and Godzilla. We assume that as Japanese fan cultures begin to leave their smaller networks and strike out on the internet, this page will grow uncontrollably.
For now, you are in luck if you're interested in anime. The first place to stop is the Anime and Manga Resources List at the University of Waterloo. This list collects pretty much everything out there. For those that don't have the time to search, you'll find the most useful sites below. If you're having trouble getting to the Anime and Manga Resources List, check out Anime & Stuff. The FAQs for the anime-related newsgroups are located at Ohio State. The Anime Pocket Guide on WWW is a fine data base for credits (but beware the romanizations!). The ultimate manga/anime ftp site is venice. At the moment there seems to be only one substantial Japanese site for anime (and it does have an English homepage available). Another useful site in Japanese is the TV Anime Database.
Most of the Godzilla sites have been collected on Mel's Godzilla Page. There is one newsgroup devoted to Godzilla: alt.monster.movies. There is also a Gozilla mailing list being managed by David Milner (dave@blackbox.cc.columbia.edu).
The Shima Network server in Japan has a couple articles on cinema and media. The most interesting is by media scholar Kogawa Tetsuo, who speculates on a massive shift in our media atmosphere in "Towards a Polymorphous Network." There is also a short article on the present state of the Japanese film industry entitled, "Working Toward Reviving Japanese Movies."
Cinema Space has a hypertextual article on Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien written by Abé Mark Nornes and Yeh Yueh-yu. One section critiques the comparisons between Hou and Ozu Yasujiro.
The Rotterdam International Film Festival has an online catalog for the 1995 festival. This button leads to their entries for about 15 Japanese films. Each entry includes a synopsis, a director's filmography, a source address, and the occassional still photograph.
SIM-TV Christmas was an experimental event in 1994 put on by NHK using both TV and Computer networks. This site contains a record of the event.
Welcome to Kinema Club
Tables of Contents (in Japanese)
Holdings in North American Libraries
Japanese Cinema Bibliography (in
English)
Japanese Moving Image Internet Resources
Reading Burch