Japanese Women's Attitudes Toward Learning Languages Other Than English in the Era of Global English

This study on female Japanese learners of the Korean language is situated in the centuries‐long anti‐Korean sentiments in Japan, the global popularity of the Korean Wave, particularly among women, and the essentialized image of socially marginalized young Japanese women who study English with romantic desires for Western men. Analyzing numerical and written data collected from 100 Korean language learners aged 20–59, this study examines (1) the impact of Japanese women's attitudes toward South Korea and the West on their time investment in Korean language study in non‐school settings and (2) a relationship between a longing for South Korea and a longing for the West in the minds of female Japanese learners of the Korean language. Based on the results, this study discusses that (1) Japanese women's passion for the Korean Wave coexists with their longing for the West, (2) they study the Korean language regardless of (dis)satisfaction with life in Japan, and (3) a gap exists between self‐perceived cultural desires and actual language study behavior. This study provides pedagogical and research implications pertaining to the dominance of beginner‐level, fun‐seeking, and hypothetically apolitical learners of languages other than English in the era of cultural content consumption, English‐centric ideology, and anti‐diversity sentiments.