Ewa Kumlin pondered the question, "What is Swedish style?" Then she set her mind to answering it.

That was 1999 -- and the result was Swedish Style in Tokyo, a two-week event featuring 30 artists working in contemporary art, fashion, design and music. The project was a success, but two years later, Kumlin is still pondering and still trying, alongside her husband, Swedish Ambassador Krister Kumlin, to help us understand her country.

"Culture is our strongest weapon," says Kumlin, "especially these days, after the terrorist attacks in New York [and Washington]. Now it's more important than ever that we travel places, meet people and get closer to one another."

The result of nearly a year's unpaid work by her, and major contributions from the Swedish Embassy, the official host, as well as from collaborators in both Sweden and Japan, Swedish Style in Tokyo 2001 is now in full gear.

This time, there are more than 200 creators, 50 events and 40 different spaces, covering as wide a spectrum as possible -- from authors to chefs, fashion to information technology, embassy to disco -- all priced reasonably and sometimes free.

"We want to create an informal, casual and comfortable meeting space for everyone from students to professionals," says Kumlin.

"The business community is anxious to invest in IT, but we should never forget the true creators -- the artists. If you don't invest in them first," she says, "you won't get any interesting technology. Artists are the ones who can transform the technical into something worthwhile."

There are still some points of frustration for Kumlin in this year's program, however. Financial support is the main issue.

"I wish we had a higher budget," Kumlin says, "because then I could have had more people and a better infrastructure to work with. We still don't know if the 60 million yen budget is [going to be] enough."

But she remains positive. "We started from scratch with the budget," she says. "Two-thirds comes from Japanese and Swedish sponsors -- it has been great to see so many Japanese companies contribute money."

And, she says, "Less money means that it is less pretentious, and we want to keep it that way."