I should be frank in stating from the outset that I do not believe that the most important distinctions among nationalisms "in the past, today or in the near future " run along East-West lines. The oldest nationalisms in Asia -- here I am thinking of India, the Philippines and Japan -- are much older than many of those in Europe and Europe Overseas -- Corsica, Scotland, New Zealand, Estonia, Australia, Euskadi (Basque Country) and so forth. Philippine nationalism in its origins looks, for obvious reasons, very similar to those in Cuba and continental Latin America; Meiji nationalism has obvious similarities to the late 19th century official nationalisms we find in Ottoman Turkey, Tsarist Russia and imperial Great Britain; Indian nationalism is morphologically analogous to what one finds in Ireland and in Egypt.
One should also add that what people have considered to be "East" and "West" has varied substantially over time. For well over a century, Ottoman Turkey was commonly referred to in English as "the sick man of Europe," in spite of the Islamic religious orientation of its population, and today Turkey is still trying hard to enter the European Community. In Europe itself, which used to regard itself as entirely Christian -- forgetting about Muslim Albania -- the numbers of Muslims are growing rapidly by the day. Russia was long regarded as largely an "Asiatic" power and there are still plenty of people in Europe who think this way. One could add that in Japan itself, there are some people who regard themselves as a kind of "white." And where does the "East" begin and end?
Egypt is in Africa, but it used to be part of the Near East and has now, with the end of the Near East, become part of the "Middle East." Papua New Guinea is just as "Far East" from Europe as is Japan, but does not think of itself this way. The brave new little state of East Timor is trying to decide whether it will be part of Southeast Asia, or of an Oceania, which from some standpoints -- e.g. Lima and Los Angeles -- could be regarded as the Far West.
Mass Migrations
These problems have been further confounded by massive migrations of populations across the supposedly fixed boundaries of Europe and Asia. From the "opening" of the treaty ports in China in 1840, millions of people from the Celestial Kingdom started moving overseas -- to Southeast Asia, Australia, California -- later all over the world. Imperialism took Indians to Africa, Southeast Asia, Oceania and the Caribbean, Javanese to Latin America, South Africa and Oceania; Irish to Australia. Japanese went to Brazil, Filipinos to Spain and so on.
The Cold War and its aftermath accelerated the flow, now including Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Thais, Malaysians, Tamils and so forth. Churches in Korea, China and Japan; mosques in Manchester, Marseilles and Washington; Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh temples in Los Angeles, Toronto, London and Dakar.
Everything about contemporary communications suggests that these flows will continue and even accelerate: even once "closed" Japan has more foreign residents than ever before in its history and its demographic profile will make still more immigrants essential if its development and prosperity are to continue.
What will come out of these migrations, what identities are being and will be produced, are hugely complex and largely still unanswerable questions.
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