As someone who is interested in Japan, the question arises: Why Japan in particular?
One could give any number of reasons why one would be interested in any particular region, country, or area that would be convincing but in reality, it is arbitrary.
Normally, when asked, I mention:
That I worked in Japan after graduating university for two years.
I sometimes mention that I spent 3 months living in Saitama while attending school in Tokyo
My Grandfather lived there in 1945 during the first wave of occupation. Growing up living near my grandparents, his home had memorabilia from the war. I made sure to visit the places he was stationed when I lived there.
To a lesser extent, I spend my childhood, like many children my age watching Japanese cartoons and playing Japanese video games.
In university, I was interested in studying Shinto and found that it was particularly difficult to find good academic sources of scholarship on Shinto at that time and even during my time in Japan I found good sources on Shinto hard to come by. I could have attributed this to my interest in Japan, although I do find that my interest in Shinto was more a result of my pre-existing interest in Japan coupled with how little I could find on it.
Some people will say how unique and special Japan is and in some regards it is a unique place but it is no more unique or interesting a place than any other region on earth such as Ireland or Hungary. Each place has a unique history and rich culture.
There are countless reasons why someone would take up an interest in Japan or the Japanese islands. For each person who does; whether they live there, have ancestry there, or will never step foot on the island, it is sheer happenstance that one finds themselves interested in any geographical region, including Japan.
For a while I wanted to distance myself from Japan, I moved to Ireland, started to learn Norwegian and wanted to explore the ancient history of the North Atlantic: I have two grandparents from Ireland, although they both left as children (one to England and one to New York). My best friend from university is Norwegian so I tried to visit as often as I could. I found myself falling in love with Norway and Sweden, in ways that I never felt when in Japan.
I began to study Early Medieval Scandinavia (Vikings) and its relation to Ireland. I found it profounding interesting but I kept being drawn back to Japan. I received my MA in archaeology at University College Dublin in Ireland with a focus on Experimental Archaeology and the Early Medieval Catholic Church in Ireland. My side projects were all looking into Japanese archaeology and while working on my thesis project: Early Medieval Ecclesiastic Bell in Ireland I began to look into Dotoaku Bells (early Medieval Bells of the Yayoi period) This is when I realized that in attempting to move away from my interests in Japan, I was trying to deceive myself.
In general, My interest in Japan is one in that I have had a long and somewhat dysfunctional relationship. It is not unique in on my part and is not unique in that Japan is a special place. It was something that I fought against for a significant amount of time but have finally accepted.
The Japanese archipelago is just a just a chain of islands, I'm just a person who likes those islands and from what I hear, there's no accounting for taste.
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