十九世紀後期日本的近代化過程之中，經常參考西方國家文明做為近代化的模範。戰前的亞洲主義和東亞聯盟的構想在西方文明的陰影之下，大多止步於「亞洲的想像」。但在一九四五年戰敗之後，受到中國革命的衝擊，竹内好（1910-1977）率先提出「東洋」這個概念欲與西方相抗衡。他主張近代化有數個型態，並且提議採用以亞洲的抵抗為主要内容的新模型。一九六○年代後期，反映日本高度成長的經驗，梅棹忠夫（1920-2010）提出從歐亞大陸的中心和邊緣思考世界文明的生態史觀。與竹内的模型相反，後者期望證明日本的近代化與亞洲社會的近代化之間異質性。然而，著眼於英國與日本同為歐亞大陸邊緣文明之相似處的觀點卻超越了梅棹自身的意圖，激發了日本知識份子將日本視為海洋文明的研究興趣。連帶著從以臺灣為首的亞洲海域的邊緣性來思考日本文明及其近代化的聲勢亦水漲船高。竹内和梅棹所做的嘗試是將戰前「亞洲的想像」當作日本變革的主體條件落實於現實中，但在一九八九年中國大陸民主化運動失敗以及東歐社會主義體制崩壞之後，在日本人當中，現實世界的亞洲又似乎再度逐漸退縮回「想像中的產物」。再次落實亞洲的近代這個理念於現實世界中，對日本甚至全亞洲－尤其是東亞－來說，皆為相當緊要的課題。

In the late 19th century, Japan often took Western countries as their models for modernization. Overshadowed by Western civilization, versions of pan-Asianism and East Asian alliance proposed before the end of WWII often constituted nothing more than the ＂imagination of Asia.＂ However, after the defeat in 1945 and having received the impact of China's Communist revolution, Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977) advocated the notion of ＂the East＂ (toyō) as an antithesis of the West. He claimed that modernization have multiple types and suggested a new model entailing Asia's resistance as its content. Reflective of Japan's drastic economic growth in the late 1960s, Umesao Tadao (1920-2010) proposed his famous ecological view of history that contrasts the different paths of development between the center and peripheries of Eurasia. Contrary to Takeuchi's model, Umesao intended to show that Japan's modernization followed a route different from that of Asian societies in general. Nevertheless, quite to the surprise of Umesao, the view that expounds the similarities between Japan and Britain as two cultures peripheral to Eurasia aroused the interest of the Japanese intellectual to regard Japan as a maritime civilization; they started to situate Japan in the Asian oceanic region (with Taiwan at its head) and consider the relationship between geography and Japan's modernization. What Takeuchi and Umesao attempted to do was to bring the prewar Asian imagination into reality to facilitate Japan's transformation. However, after the failure of China's 1989 movement for democratization and the collapse of the socialist polities of Eastern European countries, it seems that, for the Japanese, real Asia has fallen back into imagination again. Arguably, to reexamine Asia's modernity on the realistic ground is a critical issue for Japan and even for whole, particularly East, Asia.