24 people work at the Embassy of Sweden in Tokyo, of which 6 are seconded from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, one from the Ministry of Defence and one from the Ministry of Climate and Enterprise. 16 employees are locally employed.
Ambassador Viktoria Flodh Li is head of the Embassy since August 2024. The embassy has three honorary consulates located in Sapporo, Kobe and Fukuoka.
The first treaty between Japan and Sweden was signed in 1868 in Yokohama through the Dutch Legation. Sweden later delegated the authority to represent the Swedish-Norwegian Union to the Dutch Embassy.
Then, in 1891, the Meiji era began. Emperor Meiji had already ceded land around the Imperial Palace to the embassies of various countries, but Sweden, which did not send a diplomatic mission at the time, was unable to transfer the land. Later in 1906, Swedish Minister Wallenberg was appointed to Tokyo. In 1907, the Swedish mission at that time set up an office in a room at the Imperial Hotel. This was the beginning of the Swedish Embassy.
After that, Wallenberg rented a house in Yokohama as his own residence, and then began to find embassy premises. He moved around the Azabu-district but finally, at the end of the 1930s, he was able to purchase land thanks to investments from Swedish groups and other volunteers who lived in Tokyo at the time. The old embassy was constructed in 1959, and the current building (currently under renovation) was built in 1991. The overall landscape was designed with shade in mind and is characterized by a fusion of Swedish granite and Japanese wood.