Applying the large‐scale, holistic, and long‐time‐span heuristic devices of world‐systems analysis, this article highlights the crucial role played by regional geopolitics in East Asian development, In regard to large‐scale analysis, this article studies interstate dynamics in East Asia and shows how the strategic locations of China, Japan, and Korea greatly influenced one another's development. This article shows, through holistic analysis, that geopolitics often intertwines with emerging cultural constructs and changing regional dynamics and, through long‐term analysis, that contemporary East Asia must be understood in terms of its pre‐World War II geopolitical development. This study contributes to the existing literature by reintroducing the often neglected geopolitical context into reinterpreting the roles of the market, Confucianism, the state, and dependency in the contours of East Asia