[gregjh]

As someone with Asian family, I would say "no", yet it's a complaint I here a lot, usually from people of Asian descent living in western countries.

I'm a teacher by profession and I used to teach Chinese kids. I bluff you not, by far and away their favourite heroes were Captain America, Spiderman and Superman. There are native heroes of Asian countries, see below, but these usually take second or third place in their own countries of origin. It's also worth mentioning that while superhero movies are huge in Asia, comics are rare. Many Asian cultures prefer manga, horror, or romance comics.

[paw broon]

I can understand their favourite heroes being DC/Marvel.  Readers and moviegoers are swamped with American product and have been for a long time.
But there are Asian superheroes in tv and comics.  Tobor, 8-Man had a series on Japanese tv mid '60's.
There was a Japanese Spiderman tv show, loosely based on the Marvel character but different enough to stand alone.
Gekko Kamen from the '50's,
Ogon Bat was originally a pulp,
Mirrorman but I don't know anything about him,
There are/were a lot more but, can I find my notes?

[profh0011]

8TH MAN (as it was known here) was my very 1st exposure to Japanese TV... and, decades later, remains my favorite Japanese TV cartoon!  I managed to watch the entire series on Youtube several years ago, after not seeing it since the 60s.  (Since then, all these idiotic UHF station programmers got it into their pea-brains that "nobody wants to watch BLACK AND WHITE shows anymore".)  It was as good or better than I remember it from when I was a kid.

Japanese writers manage to combine dark, moody seriousness with often SLAPSTICK comedy in the same stories-- often, in the same scenes! And there was far, far more humanity in this "robot" (with the memories of a murdered human) than in all the US superhero cartoons of the 1960s combined.  Many (most?) of the bad guys came to HORRIFICLY violent ends, and the hero would stand there, feeling sad that it came to that, that there should have been some other way.  US superheroes would just blow up the bad guys, smile, laugh and move on their way.


My 2nd-favorite Japanese cartoon was STAR BLAZERS.  I always remember the day I got my Dad to watch a random episode, after, in a state of shock, he said to me... "That's NOT for kids!"     I get very emotional every time I even just think about that show.

[SuperScrounge]

Cutie Honey
Sailor Moon
Ultraman
The Super Sentai show teams (Power Rangers in the US)
The various Kamen Riders

Nobody seems to regard these characters, & probably others like them, as superheroes, but how are they not? If they'd been created in America they'd definitely be called superheroes.

[The Australian Panther]

It's also worth mentioning that while superhero movies are huge in Asia, comics are rare. Many Asian cultures prefer manga, horror, or romance comics.

Western Style comics, yes. 

Asian Superheroes fall into tw categories,
1/ Asian characters developed by the US comic industry, of which there are quite a few,   
15 Amazing Asian Superheroes
https://www.cbr.com/15-amazing-asian-superheroes/#cassandra-cain
These characters are often behaviourly indistinguishable from US superheroes.
If you search for 'Asian Superheroes' you discover that Marvel has gamed the search engine results since they attempted to promote the Shang Chi film, so it's hard to get lists of real Asian heroes.
List of Asian superheroes   
2/ Superheroes known and created in Asian counties of origin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asian_superheroes.

The beginning of the list is dominated by Asian/American Superheroes.
Go down  to the Japanese list and you begin to get real Asian superheroes.   
Here is a list of Japanese 'Superheroes'
The twenty greatest Japanese superheroes
https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/20-greatest-Japanese-superheroes
As is becoming clear, the Asian mindset is culturally different from the western, as it should be, so their definition of a 'Superhero' is something else.
My favorite Japanese 'Superheroes' are Deunan Knute a female warrior who survives the Global War. When she meets her old love, Briareos Hecatonchires, she finds that he has become a cyborg due to his injuries from the war. 
And here is the original anime movie. There was a comic series and several movies. All excellent.
You are in for a real treat.   
Appleseed (2004) 4K AI Upscale (Full Movie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Zk_HyuMyU
enjoy!

[SuperScrounge]

As is becoming clear, the Asian mindset is culturally different from the western, as it should be, so their definition of a 'Superhero' is something else.

Oh, yeah. It's kind of obvious when watching recent anime inspired by American superheroes, Tiger & Bunny, My Hero Academia, One Punch Man, where being a superhero is a 9-5 job rather than something on the side that heroes do after hours or quickly during the work day.

Of course you can also pick out American superhero influences. My nephew leant me his copy of the Buso Renkin manga (there's also an anime) and when I found out the mangaka was a fan of the X-Men I could see the X-Men elements in the story. There was also a couple of anime that had an X-Men influence, the only title I remember was Needless which had a region of the world where people all had different superpowers (called Needless in story) and different groups of powered people fight each other to take over. So in a way it was as if you had the X-Men fighting other evil mutant groups only without any of those annoying non-powered people in the way. 

[gregjh]

8TH MAN (as it was known here) was my very 1st exposure to Japanese TV... and, decades later, remains my favorite Japanese TV cartoon!  I managed to watch the entire series on Youtube several years ago, after not seeing it since the 60s.  (Since then, all these idiotic UHF station programmers got it into their pea-brains that "nobody wants to watch BLACK AND WHITE shows anymore".)  It was as good or better than I remember it from when I was a kid.

There was a Japanese Manga-style cartoon I used to watch as a kid. I think it was called "Battle of the Planets". I just remember some young looking heroes (they may have been kids, as for me to think they looked young when I was just a kid myself) standing on the side of a spaceship ready to jump out or something.
I had totally forgotten this until your comment jogged my memory.

(Just checked and I was mostly correct in my 40 year old memories!)

[Drahken]

The initial question of this thread should be clarified, the first interpretation is "is there a lack of asian heroes in western media", the other is "is there a lack of asian heroes in all media, worldwide".
To the first, the answer is pretty much "yep". There are some asian heroes in western media, but not too many, and most of those are obviously token characters. (The first that comes to my mind was the super samurai character from the old superfriends cartoon, alongside other token characters like black lightning and apache chief.) The ons I can think of offhand are jubilee of the xmen, silk from the spiderman comics, red sun or something (a japanese guy with heat powers), and the afforementioned super samurai. Asians much more commonly appear as villains in western comics.

To the second interpretation o fthe initial question, the answer is definitely "nope". Japanese media is chock full of japanese superheroes, from super sentai and kamen rider to dragonball, and others which are more debatable. (Does naruto count? Everyone in it has supernatural abilities, but 1) they're framed as common ninja abilities and 2) literally everyone has them. To paraphrase someone; when everyone is super, no one is super.) Chinese and korean media also have people with super powers, those these are most often in the form of traiditional martial arts abilities like chi.
All countries and regions have their own sets of superheroes, they just often seem like they don't because 1) people from outside those regions are often unaware of local characters and 2) cultural differences. Re #2; First there is the question of what exactly is a "superhero". For example, super sentai and it's ilk seems more like just cops or soldiers or something, but if you look a bit closer you'll find nearly all the common superhero characteristics. Secondly there are differences in the actual media. Japanese media for example usually tells a story and then ends, unlike american media which continues indefinitely until it stops making money. How is this relevant to the current question? Because american style media results in a few monolithic heroes, whereas the japanese style results in a lot of smaller heroes which each get much less public attention.

[The Australian Panther]

Battle of the Planets 01 Attack of the Space Terrapin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kb4YsJ91X4&list=PLLhOnau-tupQ8b6e96_z36YhzNG9-S8PK&ab_channel=DanJanes

many episodes here!
I remember it by name, but I wasn't watching TV cartoons at that time of my life!
I think there were also comics. 

The original of that is apparently
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Jqbb-Nk94&list=PL7xZVy5z3fgdfcRTSSDWXJHSP0gslLw2c&ab_channel=Skemer051

There are also many episodes of that on YouTube. 

[Drahken]

Yeah, gatchaman has had at least 3 english adaptations so far. Battle of the planets was the first, I first encountered the second one "G-force guardians of space", then there was a more faithful one which kept the original gatchaman title. In the BotP version the kid in the group only spoke in beeps & whistles, but in all the others he speaks normally.