Japanese Digital Resources: Pop Culture and Film

Netto Ōji is a dictionary and usage guide for Internet slang and vocabulary. It permits general searching as well as browsing through guides to slang used on specific services such as Facebook, Twitter, and 2channel.

Hatena::Bookmark is a social bookmark service that displays most-bookmarked sites by its users. Registered users can save and share their own bookmarks. The bookmarks are divided into subject category, similar to a news site.

This site, no longer updated, contains a huge amount of information on research done into anime and manga in English. The Online Bibliography of Anime and Manga Research/Anime and Manga Web Essay Archive (AMWESS) is the Internet's only comprehensive listing and clearinghouse of writings on anime, manga, the Japanese animation and comic-book industry and anime/manga fandom. It covers materials within three broad categories: published scholarship, fan-written non-academic works, and news media articles. The Bibliography includes abstracts of and citations to scholarly books, chapters and articles in academic journals, as well as to various other documents, such as research reports and white papers, as papers prepared for class, informal (fan-written) discussions, arguments and essays, and other materials. It is primarily a list of links to items on third-party sites, with some materials hosted directly.

The Japanese Film Database provides search for information on Japanese films according to title, film cast and staff, or film industry related companies. JFDB also offers information on Japanese films released in period from year 2002 to 2010 together with contact details on Japanese film industries, bilingually in Japanese and English. It is run cooperatively by the Japan Foundation and UNIJAPAN.

Film industry statistics from the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan.

DramaWiki, provided by D-Addicts, is a wiki and community site for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean television dramas. It contains detailed information on current and past dramas, and provides a schedule for currently airing shows. All information is in English.

A French-language site covering news and information about anime.

A wiki of Asian film, actors, tv, and other media-related information.

A discussion forum on games provided by the Game Preservation Society - a place to seek and share information on historical video games.

Niconico is a user-uploaded video site similar to YouTube, with videos on a wide variety of topics, ranging from entertainment to science.

Recent list of various video-sharing sites with a Japanese user base.

Crunchyroll provides both free and paid (premium) videos of anime series and Japanese and Korean dramas. It's also available as a Roku channel and mobile app.

Open-access online streaming of Japanese animation classics dating from 1917 onward, provided by the National Film Center at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, along with other organizations.

A crowdsourced fansubbing site with various TV shows, including Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese dramas, anime, Bollywood, and telenovelas. While the Japanese content isn't extensive there is some available.

This video streaming service (via Vimeo) requires rental fees and is only available in Japan.

Japan Subculture Research Center, run by Jake Adelstein, was founded in 2007 to expose the hidden side of Japan – its underground economy, its sex trade, and all the other intriguing and seedy aspects that keep the country running. It is an independent website with original reporting on all aspects of Japanese society.

Unseen Japan covers "the Japan you don’t learn about in anime" by publishing "long-form, in-depth content about Japanese people, history, and culture" in English. They "also work to fight misconceptions and prejudices about Japan that exist in the English speaking Western world."

Analysis and translations of surveys conducted by Hatena and other organizations on various topics, of the Japanese public.

A variety of surveys about popular topics from Goo.

Kinema Club is a long-standing but informal group devoted to the study of Japanese moving image media. Kinema Club was started precisely to share knowledge about Japanese cinema, so this site serves both to introduce our activities, such as the KineJapan mailing list and our conferences and workshops, as well promote information and thinking about films, research, bibliography, and education.

The MPPAJ consists of four (4) Japanese major motion picture companies, namely SHOCHIKU CO., LTD.,TOHO CO.,LTD.,TOEI COMPANY LTD. and KADOKAWA CORPORATION. It aims at the sound development of the movie production business, the prevention of unfairness among MPPAJ members, the promotion of film exports, the participation in international film festivals, and the issuance and collection of domestic and foreign materials, as well as negotiations with public organizations and related groups.

Awards Japanese film prize, and this site includes winners from past years as well as an introduction to the history of the prize.

Industry website for Japanese movie theaters.

Best 10 films of each year, Japanese and foreign, from Kinema Junpō. Includes historical award data.

Box office stats for recent years in Japan.

Film industry statistics from the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan.

From the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, edited by Mark Nornes, comes a collection of electronic "reprints" of images and books related to Japanese film.

This digital archive contains PDF scans of periodicals of the two major organizations for prewar proletarian film in Japan, as well as some smaller organizations. They are browseable on the site as well as freely downloadable.

An amateur biography of Chinese-born, Japanese singer and actress Yamaguchi Yoshiko, active throughout the 20th century. Includes multimedia such as documents, images, and video.

Discussions, resources, roundtables, and news about manga.

This site includes the association's award listings for manga every year in addition to other industry and professional information (in Japanese only).

Photos of street fashion from Japan.

An online magazine devoted to fashion and style in Tokyo. Includes articles, information about brands, features, and street photos, as well as a "fashion map."

A blog of street fashion photos from Tokyo.

A multimedia site about Tokyo fashion, including street photos and information about style and clothing, stores, and locations.

A history of advertising in Japan from the Edo period to the present as presented by the Advertising Museum in Tokyo. Available in both Japanese and English, and illustrated with digitized items from the museum's collection.

A database of newspaper advertisements from the Meiji period focusing on publishing.