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.