The “Sanuki Volumes”: Mobility and displacement in Sugawara no Michizane’s Kanke bunsō

This article investigates the strategies of assemblage of the third and fourth volumes of Kanke bunsō (Literary Drafts of the Sugawara House), the collection of the renowned early Heian scholar and poet Sugawara no Michizane (845–903). The two volumes collect the poems composed by Michizane during his four­year period of governorship in the province of Sanuki (886–890). In the economy of the collection, the Sanuki volumes add a peculiar nuance to the socio­political coordinates of a bureaucrat trained to serve in the capacity of court scholar. Specifically, the sequences of poems in the Sanuki volumes provide a narrative of mobility from and to the capital, as well as one of displacement from the center to the periphery. In this paper I explore Michizane’s strategies to represent himself in a continued connection with the center of the Heian ceremonial activity while at the same time being physically distant from it.