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The model for Asia's Quad? The Beatles, says Japan's music-loving top diplomat
Yoshimasa Hayashi, an avid music fan, drew the parallel to the Fab Four on Friday, as he met his Quad counterparts from the United States, Australia and India in New Delhi.
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(Left-right) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar attend the Indo-Pacific Quad Foreign Ministers’ panel discussion in New Delhi on March 3, 2023.
(AFP/Money Sharma)
A
s Asia's "Quad" powers search for ways to define the group, Japan's foreign minister has offered a model -- The Beatles.
Yoshimasa Hayashi, an avid music fan, drew the parallel to the Fab Four on Friday, as he met his Quad counterparts from the United States, Australia and India in New Delhi.
"This is kind of a band like The Beatles. The members are fixed and they always play together (for over) 10 years," Hayashi said.
"But this is more kind 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 counterparts with an impromptu performance of John Lennon's "Imagine" when they met in 2021 in the band's hometown of Liverpool.
The Quad was spearheaded by late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe as an alliance of democracies, that China has described as an attempt to encircle it.
Its members deny hostile intentions and stress that they are not a military alliance, instead cooperating in areas such as vaccine production and disaster relief.
