Being honest, your question threw me in for a loop because the oldest Japanese films I've seen date only back to Kurozawa's early films (and while he's one of the greatest, he's far from being one of the originators of Japanese cinema), so I went and studied a bit in order to be able to reply. read more
The bulk of Japanese feature-length silent films were made between 1920 and 1935 (period by which Japan was starting to move towards talkies), although there were some early hits during the decate of 1910 (I mean, at least four versions of Chūshingura were recorded during this decade). read more
Although there is a fear among film purists where digital revolution is concerned, those of us who study film are more often inclined to acknowledge the benefits of digital technology. For such reasons as the recent DVD-Rom entitled Masterpieces of Silent Japanese Cinema. read more
In reality, the Japanese film industry began shortly after the new medium was born at the tail end of the 19th century, yet still hardly anything has been written outside of Japan on the subject of pre-War Japanese cinema (an obvious exception being Anderson and Richie's The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, first published in 1959). read more