My own inspirational book on IJN ships is
Japanese Warships of World War II by A.J. Watts. While it does not delve into details to the degree you get with
Maru,
Kojinsha, or
Gran Prix profiles and monographs, it DOES give you one of the best general references available. It also contains enough line drawings to make it easy to decide on what ships you might want to model.
Back in the day, when people actually read books and wrote letters, this book was among the few I could get on IJN ships, and it served me well enough to scratchbuild two aircraft carrier models.
The book itself, predates the ISBN system, but you can still do a PC search and get this book at a very reasonable price, from a number of sources.
