Julia Longbottom

Julia Longbottom (born 13 July 1963) is a British diplomat and a former Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Japan between 2021 and 2026. She is the first woman ambassador to represent the United Kingdom in Tokyo.

Career

Early career Longbottom joined the Diplomatic Service at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) immediately after graduating from Cambridge in 1986. She then spent her first two years on placements at the United Nations in New York and the European Commission in Brussels. Between 1990 and 1993, she spent her first period in Tokyo as the Political Second Secretary at the British Embassy to Japan. In 1994, she moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Hong Kong Department and worked as the Section Head for Nationality and Immigration until the handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997. She was then appointed as the Head of Political and EU Section at the Embassy of the United Kingdom in the Hague. She officially assumed the role in March 2021.

On 7 August 2024 Longbottom announced she would not attend a Nagasaki memorial to victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the city because the mayor of Nagasaki did not invite representatives of the Israeli government.

Personal life Longbottom married Richard Sciver at Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale, North Yorkshire, on 28 December 1990 while on leave from her position in Tokyo. Together, Longbottom and Sciver maintain a UK residence in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. They have three adult children: two daughters and one son. is captain of the England women's cricket team.