A Change of Trade Commissioners

Johan Rugfelt, Commercial Counselor at the Embassy of Sweden and head of the Swedish Trade Council in Japan, is leaving. After four and a half years in Japan, he says, “The timing of my tenure in Japan was perfect. The Japanese economy was really taking off just as I came to Japan in 2005,” he says. “Positive news started to be reported from Japan, and it was in the middle of the longest period of economic expansion since the war—altogether around six years of constant growth.” And, he adds, this was also a period of Swedish expansion in Japan.

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Kjell Fornander | 2010-02-18

Swedish Designers Leave Their Mark In Japanese Office Supplies

Askul is one of Japan’s leading office supply companies—the name comes from asu kuru, or “it will arrive tomorrow.” The company’s massive office supply catalog is well known at all Japanese offices. What is less well known is that Askul has for several years been working closely with a number of Swedish designers. Three of them, Nina Jobs, Thomas Eriksson and Björn Kusoffsky, visited Tokyo in connection with Designtide Tokyo 2009.

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Kjell Fornander | 2010-02-08

New Member Company: Restaurant Stockholm

It’s been a long time coming, but Restaurant Stockholm, the famous and long-term center of Swedish cuisine in Tokyo, finally became an SCCJ Member in 2009. “Nakazato-san has been asking me about this for ten years,” Kozo Asaki says with a laugh. But, with a number of other businesses to manage along with the Stockholm, extra time was something he simply didn’t have. “I always worry that if you join too many things, you get stretched too thin.” But, he adds, he has been a long-time attendee of Embassy and other Swedish events—and someone who known nearly everyone in the Swedish community—so it just made sense to become a member.

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William Ross | 2010-02-01

A Will to Thrill Thrills Japan

It is one of the more fascinating life stories and, at the same time, a tragic one. Tragic, in the sense that the protagonist died before he got to sample the fruits of his hard labor; fascinating, as little Sweden has produced yet another world-class writer who has captured the minds of millions of thriller lovers around the globe. In 2008, four years after his death, Stieg Larsson was the world’s second-best selling author, beaten only by Afghan-American writer Khalid Hosseini (The Kite Runner).

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Jon Thunqvist | 2010-01-22