Former German Embassy Site (now Embassy of Germany)

The German Embassy in Tokyo (駐日ドイツ大使館) played a pivotal role in Axis diplomacy throughout the Second World War. Its history spans two distinct locations: the original Nagatacho compound destroyed by air raids, and the present-day Minami-Azabu site granted as post-war compensation.

The German diplomatic mission moved to Nagatacho in 1872 from Motoazabu (where it had been based at Shuntō-in temple since 1866); after the earlier legation building was damaged in the 1894 earthquake, a new purpose-built facility designed by the renowned British architect Josiah Conder was completed in 1897. The brick two-story building sat on the north side of what would become the National Diet Building, facing the side entrance of the Army Ministry across Nashiki-zaka slope — a location of supreme strategic importance in the heart of imperial Japan's political and military center. The compound covered approximately 5,532 tsubo (18,300 m²) and included the ambassador's residence, the minister's residence, old and new embassy office buildings, and military attaché offices connected by pathways through wooded grounds.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the embassy became central to the formation of the Axis alliance. In 1936, Japan and Germany concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact (日独防共協定), which was negotiated mainly in Berlin between Ribbentrop's office and the Japanese army attaché Ōshima Hiroshi, largely outside regular foreign-ministry channels. On September 27, 1940, the Tripartite Pact (日独伊三国同盟) was signed in Berlin by Japan's Ambassador Saburō Kurusu, Italy's Count Ciano, and Germany's Ribbentrop — the Tokyo embassy having served as the Japanese end of the diplomatic channel. Ambassador Eugen Ott, who served from 1938 to 1942, was a key figure in maintaining the Axis relationship from Tokyo.

The embassy also unwittingly harbored one of history's greatest espionage operations. Richard Sorge, a German journalist who served as press adviser to Ambassador Ott, was in fact a Soviet spy who led the most successful intelligence ring of the war. Having breakfast daily with Ambassador Ott and sometimes drafting the ambassador's cables to Berlin, Sorge transmitted critical intelligence to Moscow — including the crucial 1941 report that Japan would strike south toward the Pacific rather than attack the Soviet Union, enabling Stalin to redeploy Siberian divisions to the defense of Moscow. Sorge was arrested on October 18, 1941, and executed on November 7, 1944.

The embassy compound was completely destroyed on the night of May 25, 1945, during one of the final major B-29 incendiary raids on Tokyo. Post-war GHQ surveys found only charred brick fragments from approximately eight structures and a reinforced concrete air-raid shelter remaining. Germany had already surrendered on May 8, making the destruction of its embassy particularly poignant — the building of a now-defeated ally burned in raids on a still-fighting Japan. By around 1947, four households had built makeshift dwellings from war debris on the ruins.

The Nagatacho site was subsequently allocated for the National Diet Library, which was established in 1948 and first opened on June 5 of that year in the former Akasaka Palace. The current National Diet Library Main Building was completed on the Nagatacho site in 1961. No commemorative marker exists at the Nagatacho site.

As compensation for the loss of the Nagatacho property, the Japanese government sold the former estate of Taisho-era politician Koizumi Sakutaro in Minami-Azabu, Minato Ward, to the Federal Republic of Germany for the symbolic price of one yen. The current Embassy of Germany opened at this Minami-Azabu location, where the ambassador's residence garden — originally landscaped during the Koizumi era and redesigned in the 1960s by master gardener Iida Juki (1890–1977) — remains one of the finest private gardens in Tokyo. The current modern embassy office building, designed by MGF Architekten of Stuttgart, was completed in 2005.