The challenges of adapting Clavell's novel to film are documented in a 1980 book, The Making of James Clavell's 'Shogun.' The book furthers understanding of the novel by explaining the decisions made during filming.

Henry Smith edited a book in 1980, which helps clarify the relation of the novel to the understanding of Japanese history Learning from 'Shogun': Japanese History and Western Fantasy, shows how Clavell unmasks the myths that the West has of Japan and clarifies the history Clavell fictionalizes.

King Rat (1962) is based on Clavell's experiences in the death camp Changi. The story records one day in the life of an American prisoner of war, Peter Marlowe.

In 1963, an increasingly successful Clavell returned to his boyhood haunts in Hong Kong to research his next book. Published in 1966, Tai-Pan tells the tale of Hong Kong's strange establishment as one of the most successful centers of trade in the world through the fictional character Dirk Struan's attempt to build a trading dynasty. An apparently poor booty of the Opium Wars for the British, Hong Kong blossomed almost immediately after its founding in 1841 to profit from a third of all imports into China.

Published in 1993, Gai-Jin is Clavell's story of Japan in 1862, when it came out of isolation. The novel picks up where Tai-Pan leaves off. In this novel, a descendant of Shogun's Toranaga reviews the history of 1600 for clues on how to deal with foreigners, the establishment of Hong Kong, and trade in the 1860s.

Gina Macdonald's James Clavell: A Critical Companion (1988) provides a guide to Clavell's novels. Macdonald gives an in-depth biography and places Clavell within the literary tradition of adventure waters like Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson. She then devotes a chapter to each of Clavell's novels.

First published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe follows its hero as he confronts other cultures and uses his technical abilities in ways remarkably similar to John Blackthorne.

The Japanese noh play has been warmly embraced in the West, with such notable writers as William Butler Yeats and Bertolt Brecht writing their own. This form of drama began in the fourteenth century with the family of Kanzea. Nobuko Albery has fictionalized the struggle to establish one of Japan's most cherished art forms in her 1986 novel The House Of Kanzea. Saga of Fourteenth Century Japan.

Clavell's Toranaga is based on Tokugawa leyasu, whose final victory in 1600 established the Tokugawa Shogunate as ruler of Japan for 250 years. In 1988, Conrad Totman published a biography of this historical figure, Tokugawa leyasu: Shogun. Although written by a Westerner, the work is an honest treatment of one of the great leaders in Japanese history.

James A. Michener, an admitted fan of Clavell, wrote several novels about Japan. One of them, Sayonara (1990), tells the story of Major Lloyd Gruver, who is stationed in Japan during WWII. Graver falls m love with a Japanese woman and encounters great difficulty as a result.