by liberal japonicus
Been watching the videos of Dr Jonathan Tam, and if I had come to them through his channel page, I would have hesitated, cause his brand is doom and gloom about Asia, oh, and by the way, it’s coming for everyone else. We are all screwed. And like and subscribe to my channel please.
But I saw this video first, one of his earlier efforts, and I thought it was interesting and pretty much on target. To be fair, I think all of his other videos are correct, but seem single-minded in their focus that 1) East Asia has huge social problems followed by 2) the problems are coming for you, pasty western folks!
Tam is a sociologist who is part of the Chinese diaspora from Hong Kong, so I imagine the urge to link his experiences to the larger world and say they are at the center is pretty strong, and he did his PhD at Oxford, so that tendency is reinforced in spades as can be seen from his Researchgate page (which lists him as a doctoral candidate, so I don’t know if he’s gilding the lily a bit when he says he has his doctorate, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do if your goal is monetizing your channel. Or maybe he is like me and can’t be bothered to update his researchgate page because the company takes that as an invitation to try and extract money from you).
But that aside, and taking the fact that I haven’t been back to Korea since I returned just before COVID into account, I think that he’s right about the Korean gender war and all of the issues it brings. When I was there, I felt like all these issues were bubbling up, and it sounds like they have taken full flight. (I’ve not been back to Korea, sadly, for a number of reasons that don’t have anything to do with Korea, but more with what’s happening with me) I know a lot of you don’t like sitting through a youtube video, so a quick summary.
- Korea is at the breaking point in terms of gender polarization
- Politicans are taking advantage of this
- Structural issues, in particular housing and motherhood, are pouring fuel on the fire
- As Korea goes, so goes the world
It goes into some particularly interesting incidents and conditions including molka, military conscription, conservative PM’s election and appeal to anti-feminists, the age-based nature of Korean honorifics, housing, and the 4B movement. (I’m sure I’m missing some, so if there are any that you think I missed, please let me know) One point that he doesn’t mention that I think is pertinent is the fact that South Korea, despite making up of only 29% of the population, could be classified as a Christian nation. I mentioned some of this in my earlier post on Korea and Christianity on the old site. I’ll also flog my other posts, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, so people who want to catch me out can do so. I think the Christian connection is important because there is a pretty strong bias towards men in the religion generally, and the whole idea of ‘tradwife’ seems to not be just a US thing.
An interesting (to me, at least) point Tam makes is how Japan and Korea have essentially the same conditions, but various Japanese conditions attenuate these trends, while in Korea, they exacerbate them. The unmentioned religion aspect is one of them (Japanese are incredibly non religious, or perhaps incredibly syncretic, meaning that aspects of one particular religion never weigh too heavily on the scale). He also suggests that the hikkikomori culture as well as the rise of the soushoku-kei danshi (草食系男子) (which translates as herbivore men) reduces the issues, despite the fact that the term is perjorative. There is no system like the crazy jeonse system. I’m sure I’ve missed others, but the result is that the gender wars are not as marked in Japan as they are in Korea.
Asia is often suggested to be a mirror of the West, with trends and tendencies arising from exposure to Western fads and fashions, but often reworked in a way that makes them unrecognizable. While t’s possible to say that gender relations in the West have been imported to Asia, and then reworked, I feel like this is pretty ethnocentric, but since my frame is unavoidably a Western take on gender relations, I’m not sure how to look at the three East Asian cultures take on gender relations and be able to set aside my preconceptions. I’d be interested to know which of these conditions are seen in the West. Have at it.
As a resident of the Puget Sound, I used to meet Korean immigrant women, often married to American servicemen, fairly often. In fact, I worked for the Korean Women’s Association. It was noticeable to me how many were Christians in the worst rightwing way.
Anyone arguing that Western misogyny was imported to East Asia ought to be expected to, at minimum, show historic evidence that things were otherwise back in the day.
I don’t know about Korea. But traditional Chinese culture is pretty strongly prejudiced againsy women. That’s why the One Child Policy so drastically skewed the sex ratio for that generation: lots of female infanticide because having a son was considered so critical. Given how strongly China influenced Korea and Japan, it wouldn’t be amazing if some of that spilled over (even assuming it wasn’t there already).
I don’t think it is Western misogyny, it is Western gender roles and I wouldn’t say they are ‘imported’, more like ‘overlaid’.
lj, could you perhaps elaborate on which gender roles you see as having been imported from the West? And how they compare/contrast with what was there before.
With my Christian Korean students (or Christian Korean-American students who split time between Korea/North America and/or Korean/English) the cultural mix for genders seems like a foundation of Confucianism with an overlay of Promise Keepers style evangelicalism with a capitalist dimension that equates material success with spiritual favor.
I’m not sure if gender roles is the precise term, but as a starter, I’d note that homosexuality has never been criminalized here in Japan (except for a brief period in Meiji) and there is gender performativity in high culture i.e. Kabuki.
https://japanpastandpresent.org/jp/teaching-aids/reading-lists/male-male-love-in-medieval-japan
As someone once said, Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
So, are you seeing Japan becoming more negative on homosexuality, for example? Or negative changes in other aspects of culture?
No, Japan continues to be pretty chill about homosexuality. However South Korea has real issues.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/13/seoul-pride-festival
I’ve always assumed, with no actual knowledge, that the homophobia stuff is primarily a Judeo-Christian thing. And that therefore, the more Christian a country is, the more there will be a taboo against homosexuality. After all, it seems that it was more than tolerated in Greece etc in classical times. I’m happy to be corrected – ancient India? Thailand? I know nothing about the attitudes to it there…
Greece and Rome are a complex case. Homosexual acts were tolerated under strict conditions (interestingly the same as in pagan Scandinavia). Homosexuality was not seen as a thing per se. A man would have sex with women for offspring (an obligation for the benefit of society) but could have sex with inferior men (slaves, minors) for pleasure. Emperor Claudius was seen as quite odd for having only heterosexual sex (maybe even only with his wife). Aristotle and some other philosophers considered physical relationships between men as superior and it was part of the upbringing of upper class teens. They would get into a relationship with a mentor figure but the physical part would stop once the boy came of age. Free men that had sex exclusively with other men, in particular with free men that were not minors, were seen as dangeous perverts who did not fulfill their obligations to society. To play the ‘female’ part in a homosexual sex act as a gown-up free man made one infamous (which was a legal category that included actors, gladiators, prostitutes etc.) or even a criminal. In the extreme case of Hostius Quadra (as quoted by Seneca) this even led to the only recorded case in Roman legal history where slaves were judged justified in murdering their master.
Sex was (even legally) about dominance, and homosexual acts were displays of dominance and submission that had to run along the lines of societal norms.
Achilles and Patroklos* are often interpreted as a gay couple but both had also sexual relationships with women (Agamemnon taking Achilles’ sex slave Briseis away is the basis of the whole plot of the Iliad), so they fitted within societal norms. Their (implied to be also carnal) relationship was seen as superior since they were both high ranking males and the sex was only the supreme expression of their friendship. Had they both rejected women, they would have been condemned as unnatural (and in the mythos they would have Aphrodite going after them wrathfully as after Hippolytos).
*The Biblical case of David and Jonathan is also discussed in that way
One further addendum on Hartmut’s explanation…
The male/male sexual relations in Greece, Rome, and Old Norse cultures were not considered unmanly so long as the male involved was not sexually penetrated. I believe this was likely a sympathetic magic taboo. In all three cultures service in arms to their social group was the marker of a free man, and allowing oneself to be penetrated invited similar violations to happen in battle. A warrior could not afford such vulnerabilities.
This taboo quite likely goes back to Pan-Indo-European times.
It’s also an anxiety that seems to be floating under the surface in a lot of the manosphere fixation on the warrior ethos. I’ve seen a lot of dudes afraid of playing the part of the victim/loser in sparring drills because that “trains failure into your mindset.” It’s a weirdly paranoid, Green Lantern-esque version of the power of positive thinking.
You can see it at work 100% of the time in every moment of Hegseth’s insecure posturing and in the Orange Menace’s handshake-fu and inability to ever compromise or back down from a claim.
So much fear.
…the homophobia stuff is primarily a Judeo-Christian thing…
The strictest laws nowadays are in Islamic countries – in Iran homosexual acts are punishable by death. Perhaps one should say that homophobia is an Abrahamic thing.
However, in the literature of the Islamic Golden Age, homosexuality was treated as normal, usually following the Ancient Greek model. Proscriptions seem to have originated in colonial legal codes. Ironically, Islamic fundamentalists who speak of restoring the Caliphate are in this respect at least wanting to restore Victorian morality.
Don’t forget the ‘Kill the gays’ law in Uganda that got passed mainly through the lobbying efforts of US Kristian(TM) fundamentalists. In its original form it made it a crime punished by imprisonment for life to not inform on gays. In short: If you SUSPECT that a person is gay and NOT inform the authorities, so that person can be arrested and executed, YOU could end up in jail for life. An international outcry forced the state to temporarily withdraw the law but iirc a ‘milder’ form has since been passed which dropped the informer clause and only has the death penalty for “aggravated” homosexuality. The US fundies were NOT happy about this partial back-paddling or so I hear. They are open about their goal to use 3rd world countries as test cases until they can get the same passed in the US. It’s this kind of people that makes nonbelievers wish for the reality of hell in order for a just deity to throw its self-appointed spokespersons and executioners into. As much as there is to criticize in St.Paul, he was clearly aware of this kind of people and warned against them in no uncertain terms.
Perhaps one should say that homophobia is an Abrahamic thing.
Yes, I did consider Islam, and sort of included them (i.e. because all three religions are “people of the book”, Jesus is a prophet in Islam, Abraham is alleged to have built the Kaaba), but this is a much better formulation.
I think there’s a lot to nous’s penetration comment. Also:
You can see it at work 100% of the time in every moment of Hegseth’s insecure posturing and in the Orange Menace’s handshake-fu and inability to ever compromise or back down from a claim.
100%.
Maybe I’ve been teaching too much TOEFL prep of late, but one of the standard questions after a conversational exchange is ‘What does the man mean?’ and I find myself asking myself that in regards to wj questions to me.
First, about what gender roles were brought in or perhaps overlaid, I’ve always found that Japanese women are able to exercise a great deal of power, though it is often behind the scenes. I bump heads with a lot of feminist friends here who complain about sexism here. I say well, there is, but there are also ways where Japanese women exercise power and you’ve got to consider that. It doesn’t make everything all right, but lots of ink spilled about how Japanese women should be following the example of Western women and fails to realize they are more independent they one gives them credit.
A small example is the kakeibo system, where the husband turns over his paycheck to the wife. Here’s a video about it
https://youtu.be/itMkFmVVWIk?si=b-ZdH19FrZUQjL-n
Korea has a similar system, so it is not a panacea against sexism, and I wonder if tradwife discourse has entered Korea through evangelical Christianity, which has the husband as the CFO who then gifts a budget to the woman.
wj also asks about homosexuality, and from his question, it sound like I gave the impression that all of these developments in Asia has resulted in making homosexuality problematic. While gender roles often is a huge issue in homosexual relatioships, the inability for anti-homosexual protesters to make much of a dent here in Japan suggests that this is not something that rises to the level of an issue.
About gender ratios, my impression is that China’s problem is because of a government intervention which was not mirrored in SK or Japan. A lot of people raise the spectre of sex selection, but I don’t see any of that. I have two daughters, so I may be biased, but I see a bias for females because male kids are a lot harder to raise, especially during pre-school and elementary schooling when the mother has to invest so much effort.
LGM had this post about ’emotional labour’ in Thailand,
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/06/emotional-labor-and-working-women-in-asia
and it is interesting, but my feeling is because it gets placed into a capitalistic context, people are expected to put a money value on it. I’ve got no problem with it being used as a lever, but when you start thinking of dollars and cents, it becomes really difficult. While it is immensely difficult to deal with everything that a ‘good mother’ needs to do, Japanese women seem to accept it whereas many Western women complain. It is hard to know if this means that Japanese women are simply brainwashed or Western women are a little blind to the non-monetary rewards of that raising children in Japan brings.
As I said, I’m still thinking ‘what does the man mean’, so if there is anything else, please let me know!
I’ve seen something similar, but never understood it. My aim, when training others, was always to dial it down to where, if the kid did his very best, he’d win about 40% of the fights. Because the idea was both to teach technique and to teach them that they could win. Against anybody. Worked, too.
Never noticed that it had any kind of impact on my tournament success rate.
But then, I never suffered from the kind of overwhelming insecurity that people like Trump and Hegseth seem to. (Granted, they have good reason to feel inferior. I suppose that can eat at you.)
Thanks, lj. I think now I’ve got a better handle on what you meant. Sorry I missed it originally.