I have always been interested in the Sengoku and Bakumatsu periods of Japan, including the Meiji Restoration, the Sakoku, The Shinsengumi and Admiral Perry and the Black Ships. However, most of my knowledge, while accurate when I factcheck myself, comes mostly from games centered in the time period (Samurai Warriors, Way of the Samurai, etc...), movies (Seven Samurai, The Last Samurai, Zatoichi, Rashomon), anime (Ruruoni Kenshin, Peacemaker Kurogan) or some classes in the SCA (Samurai Chef, Calligraphy, Sumo, and Names all taught by Mistress Solveig Throrarsdottir). I have been unable to find classes in school or college which covered the subject so I would like to do some reading on my own. Rather than dive directly into books with titles like History of Japan, I wanted to know if there are any sources that r/AskHistorians might recommend for someone who is interested in rounding out there knowledge without depending on Wikipedia or pouring through dry, history books. Any well written historical fiction, historical tudies or even highly accurate movies and other media I may have missed?
Although it is a bit Western-centric (i.e. focusing too much upon how Japan's historical development relates vis-a-vis Europe) the PBS documentary Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire covers the periods in which you're examining. It's a good way to get your feet wet if a book seems too intimidating.
As far as books, The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society by Pierre François Souyri is a concise overview of the Shogunates. It's written in very accessible language and a good starting place. Due to their language and human subject matter, biographies can also be useful as a jumping off point, especially if one doesn't have a formal background in History (i.e. take classes on them) Mary Elizabeth Berry's biography Hideyoshi is also a more focused study of the late Sengoku. Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion: The Creation of the Soul of Japan by Donald Keene is a brief biography of the "worst shogun" and his cultural exploits.
Marius Jansen's The Making of Modern Japan is an intimidating book, but worth examining because Jansen tackles a number of historical interpretations of Japanese history. Kenneth Pyle's textbook The Making of Modern Japan is an older text, but still a concise synthesis of the Meiji Era to the 1980s.
For a wider, multimedia examination of East Asia during the nineteenth century, MIT's Visualizing Cultures has excellent units on primary and secondary sources under the direction of John Dower.