MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE SILENT CINEMA. Bilingual (Japanese/English) DVD-ROM (Windows). Tokyo: Urban Connections, Inc. 18,900 yen.

The Japanese silent cinema is almost unknown, so little has been available for viewing. Even in a medium where two-thirds of all silent cinema is lost (and perhaps a quarter of all sound films as well), the destruction of early Japanese cinema is extraordinary.

The 1923 earthquake and the 1945 fire bombing of the major cities, the postwar Allied Occupation torching of banned films, and the indifference of the industry itself has meant the destruction of at least 90 percent of all prewar and wartime Japanese motion pictures.

Much that has somehow survived owes its continued existence to the late Shunsui Matsuda, a man who patiently collected what he could and who left to his heirs the largest archive of silent Japanese film in the world. This collection has over 6,800 reels, including several hundred complete features, numerous short subjects, bits of other feature films, scripts, publicity materials, stills, etc.