對於九○年代之後流行的東亞話語，本文反對簡單將之視為是後冷戰時代的全球化現象，而認為冷戰與後冷戰之間的區隔，是受到美國意識形態所影響。甚至，東亞在冷戰期間並不存在。冷戰與其說是對共產陣營的圍堵，不如說是對東亞意識的圍堵。東亞意識最早是以反對西方為目的，由日本軍國主義所鼓吹。本文回溯到台灣殖民地知識分子蔡培火的(東亞之子如斯想)，是為軍國主義之外東亞意識的源頭，與當代東亞知識分子追求一種以東亞為方法，以自我否定為任務的知識實驗，內容雷同。這樣的東亞意識，是以處理東直地區國家中心主義為目的，因此不以西方為抵抗對象，也不以西方現代化為方向。但是蔡培火比當代知識分子更能免於自我中心的危險，因為他是在戰爭撕裂的情感中開創思想。相對於此，全球化下的東亞話語內容紛雄，反而不時出現戰前國家中心的危險傾向。

The discourse on East Asia that has become popular since the 1990s was not a product of globalization. This paper first problem atizes the rhetoric of post-Cold War to argue that East Asia did not exist under Cold War. To trace the origin of East Asia, this paper identified two related strategies: pre-WWII Japanese imperialism that confronted the West and colonial Taiwan’s hybrid composition of both China and Japan. Tsai Peihuo’s provocative promotion of an East Asian solution to Sino­Japanese War represented the latter approach. Echoing Tsai, contemporary narratives by those East Asian writers who look away from statist for an epistemic ground to engage in non-resistant identity formation have yet to acknowledge their predecessor in colonial Taiwan. They could learn from Tsai and his context to remain sufficiently alerted to the danger of returning to statism hidden behind globalization.