Search

Ifølge hundredvis af retsdokumenter fra det 13. og 14. århundrede i Japan, og adskillige historikere i dag, var Japan hjemsøgt af akuto ('onde bander' eller 'banditter'), som oversvømmede provinserne i perioden. Vi finder referencer til akuto i rapporter og juridiske dokumenter fra størstedelen and de centrale provinser i Japan i perioden, men trods adskillige forsøg fra japanske historikere gennem årene er det ikke lykkedes at indfange akuto'erne i simple kategoriseringer.De fleste banditter i hvilken som helst kulturel eller historisk kontekst har været langt fra at leve op til idealerne om den ædle Robin Hood røver, men komparative studier af banditbegrebet har også vist os at vi ikke kan diskutere banditvæsen blot som en form for asocial beskæftigelse. Anklagede banditters handlinger var i høj grad socialt bestemte og udslag af modsatrettede normer og legitimitetsopfattelser mellem centeret og periferien af samfundet.Der er talrige eksempler fra historien på at en succesfuld de-legitimering af rebeller eller andre modstandere som kriminelle og banditter ofte legitimerede grusom og undertrykkelse og straf, som ellers ville have været betragtet som for hård. Henvisninger i retsdokumenter, provinsrapporter eller krøniker til for eksempel mord, voldtægt, eller landevejsrøveri udgør derfor ikke nødvendigvis et retvisende billeder af den anklagedes handlinger, som nødvendigvis må forstås i deres rette diskursive kontekst. Det vil i afhandlingen blive hævdet at lignende forhold gør sig gældende i studiet af akuto fænomenet i Japans middelalder.Det primære fokus i afhandlingen er derfor hvordan og hvorfor grupper blev kategoriseret som akuto i perioden. Gennem et studie af krøniker, love og retsdokumenter dekonstruerer jeg billedet af akuto som udøvere af tilfældig vold og overgreb, og jeg understreger nødvendigheden af at se termen som retorisk middel i juridiske disputter og i krøniker.At diss, 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

Banditter er ofte kendetegnet ved deres asociale og voldelige handlinger, men det er vigtigt i analysen af disse mere eller mindre marginaliserede grupper også at huske på, at de indgik i en række andre sociale netværk. Samtidig er bandittens asociale rolle ofte en retorisk konstruktion, der har haft til formål at legitimere voldelig undertrykkelse af visse sociale grupper. Denne artikel vil gennem et studie af banditter i 1200-tallets Japan give eksempler på, hvordan bandittermer er blevet brugt, ofte med stor succes, som retoriske våben i lokale disputter over rettigheder til land.

Artiklen diskuterer forholdet mellem en krigerfamilie og en godsejer i starten af 1300-tallet i Japan. Dette gøres for at nuancere billedet af krigerfamiliernes overgreb på private godser. Det argumenteres at godsejerne ikke altid var forsvarsløse overfor krigernes handlinger, som det ellers ofte bliver beskrevet i faglitteraturen, og artiklen viser et konfliktforløb, hvor rollerne var radikalt byttet om., In standard accounts of medieval Japanese society, enormous stress is put on the conflicts between local landholders (zaichi ryôshu) and absentee proprietors. Fuelled by the debate on feudalism that divided scholars up until the early 1990s, these conflicts have widely been recognised as proof of the diminishing powers of the central elite in, or near, Kyoto and of the increasing absorption of power by warriors in both the countryside and in the administration of the military government, the bakufu. The conflicts were, in other words, seen in the structural context of a system of huge landed estates (shôen) owned by court nobles or large religious institutions, which were gradually replaced by much smaller proprietary units controlled personally by individual warrior families. This paper discusses one case of warrior/proprietor confrontation, that between Terada Hônen and the Tôji temple in the beginning of the fourteenth century.

Artiklen diskuterer Mineaiki, en af de hyppigst citerede kilder til banditvæsen i Japans middelalder. Artiklen viser, at flere af de gængse forestillinger om, hvad Mineaiki kan fortælle os om disse grupper, bør revurderes. Det argumenteres blandt andet, at disse grupper af såkaldte banditter snarere kan ses som lokale godsbeboere, der blev mobiliseret gennem landsbyernes selvforsvars-organisationer, men at de af forskellige grunde blev ikke blev set som legitime udøvere af vold af de centrale magthavere, hvorved de blev beskrevet som banditter., Based on a long range of documents from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, historians have for decades discussed the characteristics of the groups referred to as akuto (‘evil bands'). The paper introduces one of these sources, the Mineaiki, which has often been taken to represent an eyewitness account of the acts, strategies and physical appearances of these alleged bandits. I give a translation of a part of this text and discuss how this particular text has been used by various historians to explain the phenomenon of akuto. I furthermore present some alternative explanations of what we can and should deduct from the information given to us in Mineaiki based on information derived from other contemporary sources. In the present paper it is shown that the groups described in the text as bandits more likely were local residents mobilized through self-defence organizations on village level or by the generals of Go-Daigo. Though the text does not give a ‘true and fair' picture of these groups, an analysis on a discursive level can be valuable for an understanding on how the intellectual elites perceived these new social movements and upheavals.

Det primære formål med artiklen er at vise at de såkaldte akutô ('banditter' eller 'onde 'bander') ikke, som ofte hævdet, røvede og plyndrede i Japan i 1200-tallet. Gennem et nærmere studie af kilderne til især Kuroda-akutô'en argumenteres der for en mere nuanceret tilgang til studiet af disse grupper., One of the primary objects of this paper has been to show how a so-called akutô was created, not on a local level by merchants or itinerant monks committing robbery and murder or by warriors or powerful peasants opposing a distant proprietor by violent means, but by the proprietor itself as part of a rhetorical strategy designed to provoke a certain response from the recipients of the complaints and suits. The appearance of the term in various documents in the thirteenth century does therefore not necessarily indicate that a special social grouping appeared in the estates in the central and western provinces at that time. It is rather a symbol of the troubles, which the proprietors faced in controlling their estates and the steady inflow of taxes and commodities from these estates.