Masafumi Ishii

Masafumi Ishii is the ambassador of Japan at NATO in Brussels and one of the principal advisers on international conflicts to the Japanese government. He was born in Hiroshima, matriculated from the University of Tokyo at the faculty of law and took a postgraduate course in international relations at the University of Cambridge. He joined the Foreign Service in 1980 and embarked upon a successful career within the Japanese ministry, serving as Director of the Foreign Policy Bureau’s Planning Division, private secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and presiding over the Second Southeast Asian Division. For years, he was deployed in the diplomatic service. Ishii was the Head of Political Section in the Japanese Embassies in respectively London and Washington DC. Prior to becoming ambassador, he was Director-General of the International Legal Affairs Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.