The event below has been postponed to April 18, at an hour to be announced, from April 14 because of an urgent meeting with Russian diplomatic officials visiting Japan.

Yasuhisa Kawamura, Director-General for Press and Public Diplomacy  of the Japanese government, a job that includes being chief spokesman for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will be the featured speaker in a Boston Global Forum(BGF) live online dialogue titled “The Role of Japan in Peace, Security and Development in the World Today.’’  Such a dialogue takes on particular importance now because Japan will host this year’s G7 Summit, to be held on May 26-27.

The event can be seen live at bostonglobalforum.org.

Joining Mr. Kawamura in the discussion will be Michael Dukakis, Chairman of the Boston Global Forum’s Board of Directors and Board ofThinkers, and Prof. Thomas Patterson, a member of the BGF Board of Directors and Board of Thinkers; Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Acting Director of  the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

The session is one in the series of online dialogues in the Boston Global Forum’s BGF-G7 Summit Initiative, in which BGF experts have been working with Japanese officials to craft proposals to be considered by the national leaders at the summit.

The Boston Global Forum encourages its members and friends to send questions for the discussants to office@bostonglobalforum.org. Members of the Boston Global Forum’s Special Editorial Board will gather your questions and insights and send them to the speakers.

The talk and listeners’ responses to it will be live-streamed at www.bostonglobalforum.org