New Delhi:

As the “Quad” powers of Asia search for ways to define the group, Japan’s foreign minister has offered a model: The Beatles.

An avid music fan, Yoshimasa Hayashi drew a parallel with the Fab Four on Friday when he met his Quad counterparts from the United States, Australia and India in New Delhi.

“This is a band like The Beatles. The members are fixed and they always play together for (more than) 10 years,” Hayashi said.

“But this is more of a soft group, so that even within The Beatles Paul McCartney can release an album solo.”

Hayashi himself is a skilled pianist, who wowed his Group of Seven colleagues with an impromptu performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” when they met in the band’s hometown of Liverpool in 2021.

The Quad was led by the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an alliance of democracies, which China has described as attempting to encircle it.

The members deny any hostile intent, insisting that they are not a military alliance, but are cooperating in areas such as vaccine production and disaster relief.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken – himself a guitarist who has released his own songs inspired by classic rock – made a similar point with Hayashi, albeit less musically.

“We really think of this as variable geometry,” he said.

“There are different collections of countries — some informal alliances, some looser partnerships, some working together on a bilateral basis, some in slightly larger groups,” he said.

“The idea is really to make sure we’re fit for a particular challenge.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)