My first triggers were typical of a young girl in some ways. I was all of about 9 when James Shigeta's picture from a movie magazine went up on my bedroom wall. And I always wished Jack Soo was my uncle.
Flower Drum Song was followed by Shirley McClain introducing a less than accurate concept of "Geisha" to my inquisitive mind. Being a Brando fan (secondary to Shigeta!) I also watched
Sayonara and
Tea House of the August Moon every chance I got. And I read everything I could find about real geisha's - though that wasn't much till many years later.
Then around 13, my interest took a serious detour into Shinto .... at least as far as someone in Mississippi could get before the internet and without any skills for reading Japanese. I even tried to get a friend's Japanese mother to talk to me about it, but she objected to the subject even more than the base librarians. By then my parents already knew I was weird. Evenutally I gave up on that study - at least until I got my first PC.
As for everyone else I know (other than Koreans and Sansei) their interest in Japan began with either imported cars, technology or the advent of sushi as
the food that cool people ate.
