My list of classic books on Japan from the 20th century

TOKYO — The problem with recent lists of best books about Japan written by non-Japanese is they focus almost exclusively on recent publications — Bending Adversity, Dogs and Demons, Pure Invention, Ghosts of the Tsunami, The People Who Eat Darkness, Tokyo Vice, and a host of other fine works — while ignoring some of the great classics that have been written over the years. As a result, I’m going to give my own list of top books published before the 21^th century.