Asian Influence on American Culture
Written by: Greyson Williams
It is no secret that the United States is a nation of immigrants, a melting pot of cultures, one of the most prevalent cultures in the U.S. being East Asian cultures, more specifically places like China, Japan, and South Korea. The cultural exchange ranges from simple things such as food and entertainment to things like political ideology amongst citizens. Asian culture has always been influencing and intermingling with the culture of the United States.
As Asian people and culture go in the United States, no one has done more than the Chinese. Chinese immigrants were among the first Asians to come to America, Chinese laborers were instrumental in boom towns during the gold rush. Some also settled in Hawai’i, then a separate nation, where they mainly took agricultural jobs. A large portion of these immigrants were men, seeking to earn money to send back to their families in China. Chinese people formed communities that allowed them to support each other and fully adopt American culture as well as preserving their own. The first large group of Japanese Americans to come to what is now the U.S. were immigrants also to Hawai’i, many Japanese immigrants to Hawai’i worked in the sugarcane fields as indentured laborers through the early twentieth century. The same is true for Koreans.
The influence eastern culture has had on the U.S. is vast but the most obvious thing with a noticeable impact on American culture in the last decade or so is Eastern Media. Things like anime, K-pop, and Kdramas have exploded in popularity in the last 5 years, for example BTS is a male K-pop group and quite possibly the most popular one in the world. As of 2025 BTS maintained an average Spotify monthly listener count of 25.6 million despite a 2 year hiatus as well as being the most streamed K-pop group of all time on Spotify. Another popular piece of Korean media is Squid Game, quite possibly the most popular piece of Eastern media to come to the United States. Squid game revolutionized the idea of consuming eastern media towards the broader audience of Americans outside of specific niches, this is one of the many things that have acclimated Americans to the consumption of Eastern media. Another piece of media easternizing the West is the titular Japanese anime, in 2020 there was an extreme boost in the popularity of anime across the west. The more popular anime with a foothold in theWest only got bigger and the unknown shows became popular, its no shock that these shows became popular amongst Americans however. After all, anime can fit mosts niches of the shows people already watch but with more freedom to get unrealistic with things like scale, humor, design, etc. as animation is unrestricted by any rules additionally Americans get a new perspectives of the themes they already explore in thor own media just with a different cultural backgrounds and ideals.
The longest standing and objectively most glaring piece of eastern culture in the west is the food. I’d be willing to stake my life on the fact that you couldn’t find a single American with an age in the double digits that hasn't had Chinese food at least 10 times in there life, and the older you get I bet that number gets much, much higher. And I’d make that same bet with the idea that any American that has eaten solid food has had ramen noodles before, asian cuisine has been the backbone of the average American diet, especially the diets of the impoverished. Considering the idea that in the early days of Asian immigration, most people, especially the Chinese were placed in impoverished communities and open restaurants in order to make a living.
However the U.S. is not the only spot adopting culture, the biggest cultural takeaway Asia has gotten from the U.S. is sports. So much so that China had 2 people have a child together just in order to play basketball. Yao Ming is a 7 '3 Chinese Nba player created for just that reason, to play basketball, Basketball had gotten so popular globally that China could not sit and be humiliated. So the cultural influence of American Basketball had so much impact, that it led to the birth of one of the most dominant players of all time. Additionally Baseball aka “Americas game” is quite possibly the most popular sport in Japan. Shohei Ohtani is a Japanese baseball player and despite his career being in its early stages he’s already being considered “One of the Greats.” And just like us, a way that Asia is influenced by the U.S., is food. For example, around Christmas time Japanese people will order tons of KFC and eat it as a sort of Christmas dinner, stemming from a 1970’s KFC ad.
The key takeaway from all of this is culture is meant to be shared and is to the betterment of all the world’s peoples. The sharing of cultures between the U.S. and Asia go back over 100 years and has shown no signs of slowing down. The future of cultural relations have had nothing but positives for all people sharing them.