The Nippon Foundation has assembled a team of scholars and produced a list of 100 Books for Understanding Contemporary Japan. The list appears to be aimed at serious scholars, but there are some titles general readers would probably enjoy.

Here they are:

Politics / International Relations

• The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa
• Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News
• Constructing Civil Society in Japan: Voices of Environmental Movements
• Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan
• A Discourse By Three Drunkards on Government
• Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Major Economy
• The Iwakura Mission in America and Europe: A New Assessment
• Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry are Reforming Japanese Capitalism
• Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose
• Japanese Foreign Policy at the Crossroads
• Japan  Love-Hate Relationship with the West
• Japan Quest for a Permanent Security Council Seat
• The Logic of Japanese Politics
• Machiavelli Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan
• Media and Politics in Japan
• Network Power: Japan and Asia
• Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy
• Securing Japan: Tokyo Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia
• Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics
• The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s
• The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Past, Present, and Future
• U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World

Economics / Business

• An Anti-classical Political-Economic Analysis: A Vision for the Next Century
• British Factory–Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations
• The Economics of Work in Japan
• The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota
• Four Practical Revolutions in Management
• Japan, China, and the Growth of the Asian International Economy, 1850-1949
• Japan in the 21st Century: Environment, Economy, and Society
• The Japanese Company
• The Japanese Economic System and its Historical Origins
• The Japanese Firm: The Sources of Competitive Strength
• Japan Financial Crisis: Institutional Rigidity and Reluctant Change
• Japan Lost Decade
• Lectures on Modern Japanese Economic History, 1926-1994
• Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan
• MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975
• Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750-1920
• Stock Market Capitalism: Welfare Capitalism: Japan and Germany
• The Sun also Sets: The Limits to Japan Economic Power
• 21st-Century Japanese Management: New Systems, Lasting Values

Society / Culture

• The Anatomy of Dependence
• Bushido: The Soul of Japan
• Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600-1868
• Family and Social Policy in Japan: Anthropological Approaches
• Gender and Development: The Japanese Experience in Comparative Perspective
• Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.
• Japanese Science: From the Inside
• Japanese Society
• Japan High Schools
• Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots
• Neighborhood Tokyo
• Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan System of Social Protection
• Science, Technology and Society in Contemporary Japan
• Tokugawa Religion: The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan
• Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World

Literature / Arts

• Anime: From Akira to Howl Moving Castle
• The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto
• The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature
• Contemporary Japanese Film
• Contemporary Japanese Literature: An Anthology of Fiction, Film, and Other Writing Since 1945
• Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga
• Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times
• Five Modern Japanese Novelists
• In Praise of Shadows
• Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction
• Kabuki: Baroque Fusion of the Arts
• Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage, 1780-1830
• Kafu the Scribbler: The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafu, 1879-1959
• Kokoro
• The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings
• Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
• The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film
• Oe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan
• Origins of Modern Japanese Literature
• A Personal Matter
• The Pleasures of Japanese Literature
• I Have not Dreamed of Flying for a While
• Tale of Genji
• The Tales of the Heike
• The Wild Goose

History

• The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910
• The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion
• A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi
• Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his World, 1852-1912
• From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States
• The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945
• Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945
• The Making of Modern Japan
• Modern Japan
• Postwar Japan as History
• Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration
• Samurai and Silk: A Japanese and American Heritage
• State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu
• Victors of Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial
• Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics
• War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
• From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible?