Shōgun
An epic love story across a cultural abyss. English navigator John Blackthorne and the Japanese noblewoman Toda Mariko in 16th-century Japan. Their love is impossible, brief, and complete; Mariko is a great character in fiction, and her love for Blackthorne costs her everything. The romance is inseparable from the cultural education, and neither diminishes the other.
Eleven hundred pages of expert pulp wrapped around a navigator who out-Japans the Japanese within months. Clavell hops heads mid-scene, his Japanese phrases contain schoolboy errors, and the history bends wherever the plot prefers. Karma gets invoked roughly once a chapter. Gripping, absolutely; also a 1975 Western fantasy of the East, visible from orbit.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.