A not-quite-
cyberpunk sf book by
Victor Milan. It has both
hard sf and
romance elements, along with a great deal of
mono no aware. The basic premise involves the
brain race between
Japan and the
USA to build the first
sentient computer, but the book is far more
personal than this description makes it sound. It won the
Prometheus Award in
1986.
I enjoyed it, but have been unable to buy anything else by the
author.
If you read
Ronin by
Frank Miller, you will detect some fairly striking similarities. Whether Milan borrowed a bit from the
comic or not (which seems unlikely), they
complement each other quite nicely.