The one-volume spine
The Making of Modern Japan · Marius Jansen (2000)
Four centuries, Tokugawa to the 1990s, in one authoritative, readable volume. Long, but it's the book the others assume you've met; the story of how a closed island became a world power in two generations remains genuinely astonishing.
A Modern History of Japan · Andrew Gordon (2002)
The tighter alternative: Tokugawa to the present with more social history, workers and women alongside statesmen. The standard university text because it earns it; pick this if Jansen's heft intimidates.
The masterpiece
Embracing Defeat · John Dower (1999)
Japan under American occupation, 1945 to 1952: how a shattered society rebuilt meaning from rubble. Pulitzer and National Book Award, and deserves both; the rare history that manages statistics and heartbreak on the same page. If you read one book from this list, read this.
Hiroshima · John Hersey (1946)
Six survivors, one day, told flat and unforgettable. Journalism's finest hour at 30,000 words; read it in one sitting because you won't have a choice.
Where the samurai actually fit
The honest note for readers arriving via samurai fascination: the warring-states drama that fiction loves occupied a fraction of the timeline, and the deeper story, the Heian court that produced the world's first novel, the two centuries of enforced peace that turned warriors into bureaucrats, is stranger and better. (Clavell's Shōgun is a magnificent gateway and it is fiction; let it recruit you, not teach you.)
The daily route
Japan threads through 365 Days of World History (ours, flagged) where it belongs, inside the global timeline: Heian alongside the Vikings, Meiji alongside the industrial century, September's world wars seen from six continents. ★4.6 across 67 Amazon ratings, one page a day. The wider shelf lives in world history for beginners, and the Greek guide gives another civilization the same treatment.
Common questions
What is the best book on Japanese history for beginners?
Andrew Gordon's A Modern History of Japan for a manageable one-volume spine, or Marius Jansen's The Making of Modern Japan if you want the fuller classic. Start with either, then go where your interest points.
What is the best book about postwar Japan?
John Dower's Embracing Defeat, on the American occupation years, widely considered one of the finest history books of its generation. Hersey's Hiroshima is the essential companion on the war's end itself.
Is Shōgun accurate Japanese history?
It's fiction loosely inspired by real figures (Tokugawa Ieyasu, William Adams) with liberties throughout. Wonderful as a gateway; for the real Tokugawa story, follow it with Jansen or Gordon.
Do I need to read about samurai first?
No, and the samurai era is a smaller slice of the story than fiction suggests. The court culture before them and the peaceful Edo centuries after are just as defining, and the modern transformation is the most dramatic chapter of all.