Hi, everyone

It's really an interesting topic. But in the post-war period (50s - 60s), many Japanese scholars had dicussed to argue that Japan is a Western or Eastern nation. Among them, perhaps Umesao Tadao is one the most famous scholars. He wrote a book named "An Ecological View of History (Japanese Civilization in the World Context)" in Japanese language (Chuo Koron Publishing) (and has just been translated into English currently, 2002, if I remember exactly). From his perspection, he saw the The Old World as an elliptic diagram and divided The Old World into 2 Zones. The first one has 2 part, the western-most and eastern-most of the ellipe, namely Western Europe and Japan, are similar in ecological conditions and developing progress, and the second one located in the center, namely the 4 world of China, India, Russia and Islamic-Mediterranean and its satellite countries in Umesao's view.
From this point of view, we may see lots of things interesting and this book was ranked among the top 10 books that influenced Japanese after WWII (the 4th).