When most people think about antisemitism, they think of Europe. They picture medieval pogroms, Nazi propaganda, or far-right movements marching through city streets. But there is another story, one that unfolds thousands of miles away, in countries where fewer Jews live. In East Asia, a distinct and largely overlooked strain of antisemitic thought has taken root for more than a century, shaped not by religious conflict or direct historical contact, but by translated propaganda, wartime politics, and the unchecked spread of online conspiracy theories.
What makes this narrative especially striking is how it blends fascination with hostility. In East Asian countries, Jewish people have been idealized, mythologized, scapegoated, and dehumanized, sometimes all at once.
Understanding why that happened requires tracing a strange and troubling history.
What is East Asian-Jewish Common Ancestry Theory
During the Age of Discovery, European Christian missionaries encountered civilizations across Asia that did not fit neatly into their biblical understanding of history. To explain their confusion, they would connect Asian peoples to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. In 1608, a Jesuit missionary named João Rodriguez proposed that the Chinese people were descended from the Lost Tribes, and that Confucius and Laozi had drawn their wisdom from Jewish scripture.
Rodriguez eventually dropped the idea, but it inspired Nicholas McLeod to make a similar argument about Japan. In 1870, McLeod published several books claiming that the Japanese people were descended from those same lost tribes, drawing comparisons between Shinto religious practice and Judaism, and finding parallels between figures like Emperor Jimmu and Moses.
Today, this theory exists mostly as a fringe theory, but it has not been entirely harmless. Racial theorists have used the Japanese-Jewish common ancestry hypothesis to explain Japan’s rapid modernization, insinuating a genetic link between Jewish and Japanese intelligence. That framing, dressed up as a compliment, relies on the same antisemitic stereotypes it pretends to admire. No DNA evidence supports the claim, and mainstream historians and geneticists have rejected it entirely.
Although this common ancestry theory is not widely accepted, this history built the bedrock from which some of the modern-day forms of antisemitism in East Asia come from. In the next section, we will explore how antisemitism manifests today among some of the biggest countries in East Asia.
Japan
Japan’s issues with antisemitism may be less extreme as some other nations, but that does not mean it does not exist. Japan’s oldest religion is Shinto, an animist belief system in which spirits inhabit everyday objects, places, and emotions. Among its most recognizable figures are the Tengu, supernatural beings known for their red faces, elongated noses, and robes that resemble those of the Yamabushi, a class of mountain ascetics. At least one fringe conspiracy theory, which aired briefly on a minor Japanese television channel, claimed the Tengu were modeled after Jewish people, reading the elongated nose as an antisemitic caricature and the Yamabushi headpiece as a stand-in for tefillin. The claim never gained traction inside Japan; however, various antisemitic trolls have published the clip online, with some posts garnering an estimated reach of over one million people.
The more significant collision between Shintoism and antisemitism came during World War II, when Japanese soldiers stationed in Siberia encountered copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That fabricated document, one of the most notorious pieces of antisemitic propaganda in history, promoted the idea that Jews had invented being “G-d’s chosen people” as cover for global domination. Some Japanese readers found this deeply offensive. Shinto tradition says that the sun goddess Amaterasu had designated her imperial descendants as the chosen people. Some interpreted the Protocols as a direct challenge to that belief, framing Jews as rivals in a cosmic competition for divine favor. It was a collision of ancient mythology and imported hatred that left a lasting mark on Japanese antisemitism during the war years.
A 2014 ADL survey polling 500 Japanese adults found that 23% held antisemitic attitudes, and 46% agreed that Jews believe themselves to be superior to other people. In 2009, a television news reporter told the daughter of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka that her father had been undermined by the United States and the Jews. The remark drew public condemnation from fellow politicians and from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
China
China’s relationship with antisemitism looks different, and in some ways more surprising. Hostility toward Jewish people is a relatively recent development, growing significantly over the past fifty years. During the early years of the Cultural Revolution, anti-Jewish rhetoric occasionally coexisted with expressions of admiration for the Zionist movement. Founding father of the People’s Republic of China Sun Yat-sen had spoken approvingly of the Jewish pursuit of national self-determination. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, many Chinese citizens held broadly positive views of Jewish people, associating them with financial savvy and a strong commitment to education, two qualities that resonated deeply with Chinese cultural values.
Then the tone began to shift. Conspiracy theories linking the Rothschild family to Western central banking spread rapidly, likely stoked by resentment over the 1997 Asian financial crisis. By 2014, an ADL survey found that roughly 20% of Chinese citizens held antisemitic beliefs.
After the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, antisemitic content surged across Chinese social media platforms, with users praising Hamas and spreading antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and victimhood. Chinese government officials also weighed in through official channels, with some describing Israel’s military conduct as genocide. Analysts who study Chinese antisemitism have pointed out something important: it developed almost entirely outside the Judeo-Christian framework that shaped its Western counterpart. There are no centuries of religious deicide mythology here. Instead, Chinese antisemitism tends to be geopolitically functional, a tool for making sense of Western financial power and American foreign policy rather than a product of religious grievance.
South Korea
Fewer than one thousand Jewish people live in South Korea, yet antisemitism and admiration for Jewish culture have somehow grown up side by side. A 2014 ADL survey found that 53% of South Koreans surveyed held antisemitic attitudes, including concerns about Jewish dual loyalty and beliefs about Jewish influence over global business. Among the country’s large Christian population, some believers hold Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, a charge with deep roots in European Christian theology that has found new life in the Korean context.
But South Korea has also made genuine efforts to push back against these attitudes, more so than any other nation in the region. Translations of Talmudic texts have been widely distributed and are treated as sources of practical wisdom and educational guidance. Korean-language editions can be found in vending machines. In July 2021, South Korea became the first Asian nation to formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. In 2025, the country opened a Holocaust memorial museum, a public signal of its commitment to Holocaust remembrance and education. Taken together, these steps mark a meaningful commitment: a society actively working to confront its own prejudices, even while those prejudices persist. No other East Asian country has gone as far, and the contrast with China and Japan is hard to miss.
