Tokieda was born in Tokyo and grew up to be a painter. He then studied at Lycée Sainte-Marie Grand Lebrun in France as a philologist. He was able to teach himself basic mathematics from Russian problems. He is a 1989 graduate from Sophia University in Tokyo and has a 1991 bachelor's degree from Oxford in mathematics where he also studied. But he got his PhD at Princeton. He has been a part of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences since it started in 2003. In 2004 he became the Director of Studies in Mathematics and in 2015–2016 he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Stanford. Some amazing facts about him are that he is fluent in Japanese, French, and English he also knows ancient Greek, Latin, classical Chinese, Finnish, Spanish, and Russian. Recently in March 2020, Tokieda was interviewed on The Joy of X, Steven Strogatz's podcast for Quanta Magazine.