According to hundreds of legal documents from thirteenth and fourteenth century Japan, and many historians today, Japan was haunted by akuto ("evil bands", or "bandits"), who swarmed the countryside in the period.

We find references to akuto in reports and legal documents from most of the central provinces of Japan in this period, but the akuto nevertheless resist easy categorization despite several attempts from Japanese historians.

 Most bandits in any cultural and historical context may have been far from heroic Robin Hood creatures, but comparative studies of the concept of banditry have also shown that we cannot simply discuss banditry as an anti-social occupation. The actions of accused bandits were indeed socially informed and indicative of contesting norms and legitimacy between centre and periphery.

 As we can see from examples from all over the world at different times, successfully establishing rebels or other opponents as criminals and bandits has often legitimized cruel oppression of them. Felons have sometimes been accused of specific crimes in order to legitimize interrogation techniques and punishments, which would otherwise have been deemed too harsh and brutal. Allusions to for example murder, rape or highway robbery in legal documents, provincial reports, or in chronicles do therefore not necessarily reflect actual actions by the accused but must be understood in their right discoursive context. It will be argued that similar considerations are necessary in the study of the akuto phenomenon.

What is of main interest to this study is therefore how and why people were categorized as akuto. The assumption made in the dissertation is that the akuto were not necessarily bandits in a traditional sense of the word and that the phenomenon should primarily be discussed as a rhetorical label in disputes over land rather than as a social or criminological category. Through a study of chronicles, laws and legal documents from the period, the dissertation thus deconstructs the image of the akuto as instigators of wanton violence and predatory behaviour, and it underlines the importance of the term as a rhetorical device in legal disputes and chronicles.

The appearance of akuto in sources from this period does therefore not suggest growing ‘unlawfulness' in the provinces in this period, but rather a result of a growing application of central authority and law to local disputes. Tales of unlawfulness was indicative of the presence of law and not the opposite.

They were not progressive peasants or deviant outcasts but rather conservative local elites and other groups protecting their traditional privileges in a changing society.

The study thus emphasizes that the central proprietors were not meek victims of greedy warriors and deviant bandits, and that the actions of these ‘bandits' should be discussed in relation to local conflict processes, which involved social acts (including violence) which defied the norms and rules of the central powers and were condemned and prosecuted accordingly.