BS. This line of thinking is why our industry is so toxic.
If you want to work on programming-related topics in your free time, great! If not, great! If an interviewer expected me to work on programming-related projects in my free time, I would immediately end that interview and probably never work at that company. We need to normalize people doing other things in their free time.
You also don't need to be productive each week(end) on top of work. There are times when we're more productive and times when we're less productive- and that's perfectly fine. Some people are more driven, which is fine. But there is more to life than work.
Japanese (and Korean) work culture is highly toxic even by American standards. It should not be the basis of anything for deciding how to live one's life. It's sad to see this rhetoric coming from someone who actually has a family.