If you haven't already, I'd suggest downloading 'Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904)' by Lafcadio Hearn (free for Kindle or as an .html from Project Gute

If you haven't already, I'd suggest downloading 'Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904)' by Lafcadio Hearn (free for Kindle or as an .html from Project Gutenberg). Although sympathetic but culturally chauvinistic by contemporary standards this study does supply a corpus of interesting observations on the history of a Japan rapidly transitioning from micro-managed hierarchical feudalism to a form of Euro-inspired modernism, with associated strengths and weaknesses. And this while engaged in a war with tsarist Russia. What Japan was shapes what Japan is.