Yoshio Mutō (武藤 義雄 Mutō Yoshio) is a Japanese diplomat who served as Imperial Japan's consul general in the United States from February 20, 1941 until the withdrawal of the mission on December 31, 1941. Some historians of the period have speculated that in the run-up to the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, the consulate, located in San Francisco, was a spy center and that Mutō was himself a spy . No concrete evidence, however, has been presented to corroborate these allegations.