Books about Asia

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Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia
Great.  Mostly about Japan and China.

Japan

Alex Kerr
Lost Japan was a little sappy, but great.  Dogs & Demons - If you spend any amount of time in Japan you must read this.  Flawed in some ways but the main idea is right on target.  After I read this I felt like I finally understood what was going on there.  How everything is corrupt and they've destroyed most of the country, why everyone lives in such crappy little houses, why the cities are so incredibly ugly.

Robert Twigger
Angry White Pyjamas was absolutely great.  A foreign teacher signs up for a super intense riot police martial arts training program.  Well written, interesting and quick.

Herbert P. Bix
Hirohito destroys the myth that Hirohito was a pacifist emperor overruled by evil generals.  That whole myth was created with the help of MacArthur in order to control the country during the restoration.  It was morally equivalent to the US teaming up with Hitler after WW2, praising and pardoning him, and using his influence over the people to pacify the country.  Pardoning the emperor make Japan feel like they themselves hadn't made a mistake - since the "ultimate japanese" guy, the emperor, wasn't shown to have been wrong.  They maintained their purity and never admitted that they were wrong and had done evil.  Japan never really apologized for the war and has mostly forgotten everything about it except their own victimhood from the bomb.  The Prime Minister still visits and shows respect at shrines to the war dead which contain the bodies of torturers as bad as any of the nazi concentration camp doctors.  Absolutely disgusting, and it really makes Korea and China mad since they were the ones being tortured and murdered.
The book is really long and suffers a lot because it doesn't include the Japanese characters for the names - they're all romanized instead.  That makes it really hard to keep track of who is who.  In fact there is not a single japanese character in the entire book.

Karl T. Greenfeld
Speed Tribes is pulpy fictionalized accounts of the life of various japanese subcultures such as gangsters, porn stars etc.  Interesting...  but pretty hacky.  Some good ideas in there though.  I wish I could move through various subcultures in japan that easily.

Japanese Fiction

Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood - I loved this book so much.  I thought Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was a little floaty and vague.

China

Mark Salzman
Iron & Silk is a Great book about a foreigner visiting China.  I thought it would be all about martial arts but it's not at all.  Awesome, great, must read about China.  This finally explains how great living in China can be.

Nicholas Krist & Sheryl WuDunn
China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power is a great overview of China.  Best book I've read about China so far.  He's a NYT editorialist now.  Really smart guy.

Jonathan D. Spence
God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan was pretty interesting.  Mid 19th century a sort of crazy Chinese guy starts believing he is the brother of Jesus and starts a rebellion.  Local mobsters and peasants join in and over 20 years they take over big chunks of China before being crushed.  Something like 20 million people die, and nobody's ever heard of it.  19th Century China was insane.

Peter Hessler
River Town - A young guy spends 2 years on peace corps in a small town in China and writes it up.  Good.  It explains how it can still be really nice to walk around in China despite it being so dirty and polluted.

Nien Cheng
Life and Death in Shanghai is the story of a Chinese woman who was heavily persecuted and imprisoned during the cultural revolution.  Lots of it takes place while she was in prison.  It's great.  Intense, really well-written, really thoughful.

Chinese Fiction

Eliott Pattison
Bone Mountain - Written by a westerner, a spooky mystery which takes place in Tibet.  He really, really doesn't like public security or the PLA.  I'm amazed that I was able to buy this in Beijing.  I quit halfway through though...

Maureen McHugh
China Mountain Zhang - SF that takes place in a China-dominated future.  Good.