Hey you guys, I'm super late in replying! Sorry about that!
Thank you so much for the recommendations. I will check out each of them (really!). The only one I had, amazingly was, yup, Chrysanthemum and the Sword. ha! Have not read it, though.
Speaking of outdated books, I bought one just for laughs, written in the early 1900s, actually got an original copy. I will find out the title and author. She's a woman who went to Japan, had a Japanese guy for a servant (basically a slave) and generally just traveled around demeaning the countryside. Would make a funny anime, and it is, indeed, hilarious to read. She was almost completely ignorant of Japanese culture, and the conclusions she drew were frequently laughable.
Anyway, thanks again everyone, and I'm always open to more. The 15-minute dramas sound like a REALLY cool idea. Oh, and I guess I do own one more of the recommendations, and that's Kitchen. Really enjoyed that one, actually, probably because it did kind of feel like "real-life" Japan in a lot of ways.
Got a good laugh from that last post about the swords/mechs.
Thanks again. Got this thread perma-bookmarked.