Contrary to what the youngster Chakster says, before 1979 Japanese pressings were hardly looked upon as top quality, if indeed Japanese pressings were even imported (to the US) in those days. In those days, the best pressings were often European in origin, e.g., ECM, EMI, Decca, and others I cannot conjure up, including some excellent French labels, and in the US, we had Verve, Pablo, Columbia, etc.
@lewm I'm buying Japanese LPs from Japan nowadays. I already have American original pressing of my favorite 70's stuff. Japanese pressing is superior to nearly all American pressings. There was a very nice article about it in Wax Poetics magazine. In the 70's Japanese releases of American music were made from the master tapes on virgin vinyl by companies like Victor, CBS, Toshiba, Polydor K.K. etc. Those are giants of the industry as you know. They are absolutely top quality and better than European releases.
I'm interested mainly in Jazz, Funk, Soul, Latin and Soudtracks from the 70's, so I know what i'm talking about when it comes to this music.
There is nothing interesting for me on EMI, ECM, Pablo ... from your list, probably it's different genre of music. But if you what to try Japanese pressing of these labels then look at SAL'74 here ( Mainly for Japanese Polydor K.K. manufactured reissues of Verve Records, Pablo and Polydor labels ).
I'm aware that German pressing was great, can't say it about French pressings, but Japanese pressing from the 70's is the best in my opinion. Some American pressings also great! But sometimes American originals cost 10 times more than Japanese pressing of the same release from the same era.