<研究ノート>鎌倉期における「悪党」の語義変化

Abstract

This paper is a historical study of the uses of the word akuto 悪党 that appears prominently in historical documents from the latter half of the 13th century to the first half of the 14th century, In recent years studies of akuto have developed as an extension of the viewpoint of Yamakage Kazuo who considered the word akuto to be "a historical term that indicates a certain historical reality." In regard to Yamakage's interpretation of akuto that formed the core of his theory, alternative theories that include important new points have been proposed by Kondo Shigekazu, Shimozawa Atsushi, and Watanabe Hirochika. However, the dialectic process of overcoming the contradictions of these and Yamakage's theory has not been achieved so there is still much confusion regarding the interpretation of the term. There are specific contradictions among the four theories regarding the understanding of 1) those who invested the word akuto'" with a new usage, 2) the basic definition newly added to denotations of this word, and 3) the time when that change occurred. The task of this paper is to break through the confusion and present a coherent hypothesis concerning the history of the word akuto by attempting the fundamental task of a complete revision of the image of akuto in medieval society. In this case it is necessary to consider the problems encountered in earlier scholarship in regard to the word akuto such as the tendency to confer it special status and absolute character and to confine it to a single meaning. This is due to the fact that an analysis based on these preconceptions will cause us not only to overlook the dynamic processes by which a word is accorded special usages but is also likely to lead us into the error of talking the first usage of akuto in the Middle Ages as the origin of the special usage in the late-Kamakura period. In order to avoid these pitfalls, the following three points are given special consideration in this study: 1) observing the interpretation of word "meaning" more strictly, 2) paying careful attention to the polysemy of words, and 3) focusing on changes in its relationships to synonyms. A summary of the conclusions of this study includes the following points. Before the middle of the 13th century, the basic meaning of the word akuto was exclusively "a group of villains, " which had been the original meaning of the word. However, after akuto was adopted and defined as a legal term by the Kamakura shogunate to refer to "crimes such as yo-uchi 夜討 (burglary), goto 強盗 (robbery), sanzoku 山賊 (brigandage), or kaizoku 海賊 (piracy), and also the gangs who committed those crimes" (which occurred during the middle of the 13th century, specifically from the second month of Enno 2 (1240) to the fifth month of Kocho 2 (1262)), this new usage gradually spread beyond official usage and took root. The word akuto then came to be recognized as a word closely associated with robbery, and "robbery and robbers" was established as one of the new basic meanings of this word. Thus, the word akuto became popularly a polysemic term in the era from the middle of the Kamakura period to Muromachi period. One result of this study is to enable us to understand the adoption and definition of akuto as being closely related to the strengthening of the police-action system by the Kamakura shogunate in the middle of the 13th century. It can be surmised that the Kamakura shogunate adopted and defined the word akuto as it gradually reinforced countermeasures against robbers as a part of policy of good governance instituted after the famine of the Kangi era in the first half of the 13th century and increasingly took measures to suppress those it branded akuto.