From the latter half of 2001 to the middle of 2002, prime minister Junichiro Koizumi was plagued by a series of scandals and administrative mishandlings, which led to some important executive turnovers. Although Koizumi has thus far upheld his principle of ‘one cabinet, one minister’ for the sake of policy stability, his campaign promise not to reshuffle cabinet has already been compromised somewhat, and is likely to be abandoned entirely in the near future.