Looking for a great novel about Samurai or ancient Japan for my girlfriend - any suggestions?

By envelope_tide

My girlfriend’s gotten really into old Japanese culture/history lately, and I’m trying to find a good novel set in that kind of era that’s still fairly easy to get into. We watched *13 Assassins* the other night and we both liked the whole vibe—more the way people talked and lived, and the atmosphere overall, not just the action. So I’m basically looking for something with similar themes: honor and the whole hierarchy stuff, politics, and how it all shows up in people’s personal lives. If it’s more character-focused, even better. She tends to lose interest if it starts feeling too abstract or more like straight facts. Also, it’d be great if the book isn’t super obscure, since we’d need a German translation.