Hoi-eun Kim is a young and enthusiastic historian and author of the J. Worth Estes Prize-winning article "Cure for Empire: The *Conquer-Russia-Pill,' Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, and the Making of Patriotic Japanese, 1904-45." Doctors of Empire is Kim's latest work, and it is a great honor to be given the opportunity to review it.
As the title indicates, the protagonists of this brilliant monograph are German physicians in Japan and Japanese medical students educated in Germany, who criss crossed between Germany and Japan from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Focusing on the interaction between them, the author seeks to explicate the process of "Germanization" of medicine in Japan.
Kim entertains a lively concern to redress "the lopsided view of German-Japanese engagement" (8) that scholars based in Germany have had so far. The author rejects the approaches adopted by previous scholars as a simplified teleological reading of his tory. His criticism of previous studies is severe indeed, as evidenced by such harsh phrases as "the lopsided view of German-Japanese engagement" or "the myopia of nation-state-based historical analysis" (9). Two approaches, diffusionism and excep tionalism, are the targets of his criticism. The "diffusionist" account of German Japanese engagement, in which the pivotal influence of a few Germans in the estab lishment of a modern constitution and army in Japan are emphasized, has regarded Japan as an avatar of Germany. Conversely, exceptionalism, which is a simple, com parative way of study based on the abstract concept of the modemization theory, has demonstrated that authoritarian or fascist rule resulted from state-sponsored indus trial modernization in both countries. Neither of these approaches have, according to Kim, been released from the Sonderweg (special-path) thesis that Hans Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka proposed in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Hence, scholars who have adopted them have perceived medical science as nothing more than another finalized product that Japan slavishly copied from Germany.
