Despite long-standing cries for recognizing groups sidelined by history and repeated calls to expand our political imagination, Asian studies remains dominated by nation-states. In my presentation, I provide a framework to understand identity in East Asia, specifically Okinawa, Taiwan and Korea. These three identity formations cannot be understood through our existing conceptual structures because they exist both between, within and beyond individual nation-states. These "countries" did not simply transition from empire to nation-state but from the Chinese empire/tribute system to the Japanese empire to the US empire, amidst the tensions of the cold war. The tension between the past and present emerges in each of these national projects and could open possibilities to rethink the future of East Asia from the margins beyond processes of marginalization. Okinawa and Korea were each part of the Chinese tribute system and then came under the grips of the Japanese empire, which itself attempted to reproduce and transform the tribute system in a different context. After World War II, the US empire attempted to use Japan to exert influence over its former colonies, including Taiwan and South Korea. I contend that the re-imagining the future of these nations is intimately connected to rethinking the potential of the tributary system to imagine a world beyond the global capitalist system of nation-states.