It was elevated to the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Tokyo by Pope Leo XIII on June 15, 1891, with the suffragan sees of Niigata, Saitama, Sapporo, Sendai, and Yokohama.

Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, S.V.D.,[1] previously serving as Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Niigata,[1] was appointed Archbishop of the Tokyo Archdiocese on October 25, 2017.

After the “seclusion period”, the first missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society arrived in Japan in 1858, and were stationed in the three ports of Nagasaki, Yokohama and Hakodate.

[2] Pierre Marie Osouf was the first Ordinary (Catholic Church) of the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Japan.

[2] On April 17, 1891, the Vicariate Apostolic of Northern Japan was divided into the Archdiocese of Tokyo and the Diocese of Hakodate.