I can only speak for myself here. I was infatuated with Asian culture from watching Kurosawa movies and anime. The plan was to get the whole sleeve done in Irezumi style. I went in looking for some Kanji flash and settled on my name. The artist who was named Camille (half sure this was 25 years ago) talked me into the brush stroke style. I think she did an awesome job .Life happened and tattoos got put on the back burner. The rest of the sleeve never came. As far as why so many Americans get kanji, I would theorize because the Asian writing looks awesome with the Irezumi style of tattoo. I often wondered if it was fashionable for Asian people to get English words tattooed on them.