One distinctive trait of Japanese Nō drama is its avoidance of highly individualized characterizations in favor of expressing powerful emotion. Hence the Nō theater relies on certain character types. In developing these types, it of course used images and ideals prevalent in the culture and in turn elaborated and influenced these ideals.

For Zeami (1363-1443), who brought Nō to perfection, and indeed for most of his contemporaries, the ideal man was a warrior who combined aesthetic sensitivity with martial valor and loyalty. By 1423, the date of his Nōsakusho (The Composition of Nō), Zeami had written at least six plays that supported and contributed to this image. The warriors he depicts are some of the most elegant in any literature; among their various concerns are poetry, music, costume, youthful beauty, and the Buddhist form of salvation. They are also fiercely concerned with matters of loyalty and defeat—and they were all defeated. The warriors Zeami actually knew, including his patron and military ruler of the country, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), attempted to live up to this image of the ideal man.

The attributes of the ideal woman, on the other hand, were much more problematical in Zeami's time. She could be readily defined in the Heian period (794-1185), when court women were active in shaping aesthetic sensibilities that endure even today as an important part of Japanese culture, until as a consequence of the political turmoil and wars of the late 12th century, the glory of the Heian court waned—and with it the independence and power of the women who had helped create it. Men could adapt to the changed cultural situation by adding martial values to traditional aristocratic ones. But this was impossible for women, who were not acceptable as warriors. Their importance in Japanese culture declined abruptly until by Zeami's time the role of women—or at least of those women who had contact with upper-class men—had been split into two facets: there were wives, and there were entertainers, and neither was idealized in the popular imagination. For a court lady, an aura of elegant beauty was deemed essential, but this could hardly be the case for a wife. And an entertainer, who was usually a dancer, had neither the artistic education of a court lady nor the sophistication of later courtesans. There was no model for women that had the wholeness and the glamour of the aristocratic warrior ideal, and there were no women writers to help shape one.

It is not really surprising, then, that Zeami never fully developed an ideal woman comparable to his warrior model. He has many plays about women, but they do not fit a single mold and are hardly a uniform category as is the case with his warrior plays. The descrepancy is also apparent in his treatises when, in discussing various styles of acting, Zeami relates the “martial style” specifically to his warrior plays, but defines the “feminine style” more generally in terms of any play with a female shite (main actor).

The theme Zeami most often associates with women is love—an emotion which was not only unworthy of a warrior's attention, but one which could become obsessive and lead to madness. Because Buddhism considered love a delusory attachment, it could also lead to hell. Aware of these consequences the women in Zeami's plays are nevertheless extremely, and even heroically, loyal to their loved ones. Zeami's women in love include court ladies, crazed women, and wives who express such love-related emotions as nostalgia, grief, and resentment (urami).

Zeami believed that his ideal of beauty, yūgen, was best expressed through the “feminine style”, and that the vehicle for expressing the highest form of yūgen was the court lady. In Nōsakusho he wrote that in choosing the “seed” for a play, an event concerning an aristocratic lady is “a jewel within a jewel,” for “the beauty of elegant taste holds an unsurpassed position in yūgen.” In accordance with this view, the shite in Izutsu (Well Curb) is deliberately given an aristocratic background. This is poetic license on Zeami's part: the source of the play—section 23 of Tales of Ise—relates that the children who played together by a well, grew up, and got married, were the children of wandering peddlers. It was conventionally assumed that in all of these tales the hero was the poet Ariwara no Narihira. In the interest of giving an aristocratic background to the woman in his play, Zeami ignored chronology and identified the girl's father as the nobleman Ki no Aritsune, even though he was in fact Narihira's contemporary.

At the beginning of Izutsu, a young woman (the shite) who is bringing offerings to Narihira's grave in a temple yard evokes the mood of the setting:

Everywhere autumn nights are lonely, but in this old temple where people rarely come, the wind blows through the garden pines deepening the night. The moon sinks to the eaves, where grasses—forget-me-nots, how-long-ivy, hidden-longing-leaves—call to mind the past now gone. How long shall I live awaiting nothing? What but memories does this world leave us? … Uncertain world, a dream, so too our hearts. What sound will awaken us? What sound will awaken us?

The sound that immediately follows is the voice of a travelling priest who had previously entered the temple grounds and now, catching sight of the girl, questions her about herself and the place. Working her way backwards through time, the girl explains the grave, Narihira's fame, his faithlessness, and how his wife's love and poetic skills recaptured his love. Finally in the kuse—what Zeami called “the ear-opening section,” the verbal highlight of a play—she recalls their childhood romance. The shite's sole line in the kuse (the rest is sung by the chorus) is taken from a poem sent her by Narihira as the first expression of the love that was taking shape within him: “At the well-curb by the well, against the well-curb measuring our heights.” These repetitious syllables (tsutsu izutsu, izutsuni) are repeated several times in the course of the play and function as a refrain, or perhaps a mantra. In the final scene of the first act the young woman reveals that she is Aritsune's daughter, the woman of the well-curb, and while the chorus relates how she disappears into the shadows of the well, the shite walks slowly down the hashigakari (runway from the stage proper to the wings). There is little movement in this act, which is carried mostly by the beauty of the language and the power of the actor.

The shite returns in act two wearing Narihira's cloak and cap and recaptures the past in her dance—the “eye-opening section.” But something strange happens here, for she is not alone. The spirit of Narihira clings to her, and her dance is the dance of a body possessing two spirits. Afterwards the shite declares that the past has returned and recalls the time Narihira composed the famous peom, “Is not the moon the same, the spring, the spring of old?” Quoting the well-curb poem, the shite looks into the well water and sees reflected there the image of Narihira. This moment of “no action” when the shite looks into an abyss transcending time and space is the climax of the play.

How I yearn for that face, my own face, yet I yearn. The ghost of the lovers vanishes; a withered flower faces, only the scent lingers, at Ariwara Temple, a bell tolling dawn in the dimness; the wind awakens the pine and the dream, like a frail banana leaf, is left in tatters, and we awaken. The dream is broken; day is dawning.

Izutsu is the evocation of a once-beautiful love. An emotion from the past “takes shape” (iro ni ideru) for a moment in the present and then is gone again. Time is transcended, but something more also happens. The figure in Izutsu becomes a union of the masculine and the feminine, the yin and the yang—a perfect expression of harmonious love.

Possession of a female body by a male spirit is not unique to Nō. It is, in fact, an important element in native Japanese religion, where female shamans are often possessed by male deities. The usual pattern in Nō is for a female shite to put on the gown of a male, usually her lover, and become possessed or crazed. In Sotoba Komachi the shite's body is temporarily taken over by her lover, who died resenting her. Then the shite returns to her senses—or comes back to herself—and enters the path to enlightment. In Matsukaze the donning of Yukihira's robes causes the shite to believe that the pine tree in front of her is her lover. It is in Izutsu, however, that this type of possession attains its highest aesthetic form by virtue of the mysterious doubling. Zeami was fascinated by the idea of an aristocratic woman in the grip of possession. It is, he wrote in Nōsakusho, like cherry blossoms with the fragrance of plum blooming on a willow branch. Accordingly, he had a high opinion of Izutsu, calling it “a superior work” (jōka ari) in Sarugaku dangi (Conversations on Sarugaku, 1430). The unified figure of Izutsu and Narihira is among the best expression of yūgen.

In his first treatise, the Kadensho (Transmission of the Flower, 1400) Zeami distinguished two kinds of frenzy or madness (monogurui). The first type, possession, occurs when an external spirit possesses the body of another, as in Izutsu (this is a particularly elegant and gentle example, Sotoba Komachi is a more ferocious case). Possession, Zeami claimed, is relatively easy to portray if the actor understands the nature of the spirit possessing the character. The second kind of frenzy is obsession: the shite becomes deranged as a result of anxiety about a separation from a child, parent, or male, and seeks a reunion. This emotional state, according to Zeami, is much more difficult to portray. Although men are sometimes deranged by the loss of a child, the best plays of this type are about women. Zeami wrote two “obsession” plays about women separated from their lovers, Hanjo and Hanagatami, and it is probable that Sakuragawa, a play about a mother in search of her son, is also his.

Hanagatami (Flower Basket) is a paradigm for deranged women plays. Teruhi, the shite, is the lover of a royal prince temporarily residing in the province of Echizen. One day, when Teruhi has gone home to visit her family, the prince is abruptly summoned back to the capital to become emperor. Before departing he leaves a flower basket and a letter for Teruhi, and as the play opens a messenger is delivering these keepsakes to her. At first she marvels at his good fortune, then she begins to consider her own circumstances: “Parting now after these many months, how can I ever forget him?” She reads the letter in which he expresses his hope that they may someday be reunited and departs, thankful that she at least has a token of his love:

Lonely even when my lord lived here, this mountain village where now I'm left alone. The indifference of the moon at dawn as spring passes; cedar breezes, pine storms. When did the blossoms fall leaving longing, his basket, and his letter? Embracing them, I return to my village.

She exits to a soft drum accompaniment. There is not yet any hint of frenzy. A gentle, young, and beautiful woman has been left alone with her grief.

Act two begins with an imperial procession. There is rejoicing in the land, for a new ruler has been crowned, and the emperor and his retinue are on an outing to enjoy the beauty of the autumn colors. The scene is brief, yet stately, as befits an emperor.

After the imperial party has been seated, the orchestra plays shite entrance music as Teruhi and her maid appear. The maid is carrying the flower basket, and Teruhi wears her outer-gown off her left shoulder—a sign of her derangement. They sing of their desire to go to the capital, and then, after the shite has performed a brief dance which changes tempo several times to indicate her erratic state of mind, the chorus joins her in a travel song depicting their journey.

The women meet the imperial procession, and a retainer (the waki) brusquely pushes them aside, knocking the flower basket from the maid's hand. A brief exchange leads up to the shite's frenzy (kurui), a scene in which she presents the height of her derangement in song and dance. At the end she refers to the moon, a symbol for her departed lord:

I have come here for him, but he is far above me. Moon Capital it is called, yet the moon is only in the name. I cannot hold its beams in my sleeves, nor take it in my arms. In vain I gaze at the moon reflected in the water, and like a monkey try and fail to grasp it; moaning I collapse and sit here sobbing.

Teruhi is then ordered to perform a dance before the emperor. This is not an uncommon request, for mad people were expected to entertain. Quieting down somewhat, she sings and dances the kuse, which was originally an independent song-dance (kusemai) written by Zeami's father, Kanami. It narrates the story of the Chinese emperor Wu Ti who lost his favorite concubine. Unable to work, he has her portrait painted, but as that is too unresponsive he finds someone who is able to conjure up her image which fades away when he attempts to touch it. After the dance, the emperor asks to see the basket and recognizes it. The reunion scene is played down in performance, as it is in other Nō plays of the same type, and it comes as something of an anticlimax when she is told to return to the capital with the emperor.

Unlike Izutsu, where an old story is unreeled in reverse order until the past itself takes on form, the action in Hanagatami is presented chronologically through a series of scenes depicting different moods and states: the gentle grief of a beautiful woman abandoned by her lover, the splendor of an imperial procession, the lonely bewilderment of two mad women on a long journey, an abrupt encounter followed by the frenzy of a woman scorned, and the fantasy of that same woman before she is finally reunited with her lover. The story of Wu Ti forms a counterpoint to the action, with his attempt to touch her image mirrored in Teruhi's reaching out for the reflection of the moon. It also suggests that if Wu Ti longed so passionately for his concubine, her emperor-lover might also long for her.

Although Teruhi is not an aristocratic woman, her relationship with the Japanese emperor and her association by allusion to Wu Ti confer on her a higher status than most deranged women in Nō have. In Hanjo, for example, the shite is simply an entertainer at an inn. Imperial associations are used by Zeami to add elegance to Hanagatami, but at the same time he makes use of Teruhi's obsession to express powerful feelings that would not normally be appropriate for a lady. An intensification of feeling thus goes hand in hand with a heightening of beauty.

In another deranged woman play, Sakuragawa (Cherry Blossom River), yūgen is expressed without recourse to aristocratic elegance. The shite in this play, far from being an aristocrat, is so poverty-stricken that her young son sells himself into slavery in order to provide for her. In the brief opening scene the mother learns what he has done and is desolate:

My days and nights pass in poverty, but in times of sorrow the sight of my child would always console me. The child I named Sakurago, Cherry Blossom Boy, after the goddess of blossoms … What have I to live for now? … I shall go and search for him.

She goes off stage weeping.

In the next scene, three years later and far to the north, several priests set out with a young boy to view the blossoms at Cherry Blossom River. A woman appears, and in a brief dance expresses her grief at the sight of the blossoms fluttering down to the water. Then she sings of the long journey she has made in search of her child, ending her song on a note of concern: “What if we meet and don't recognize each other?” Questioned by the priests, the woman explains that she has come to this particular river because of its association with her son's name. When they ask her to entertain them with a frenzied dance, she obliges by dancing an iroe. The kuse, which the chorus then sings while she dances again, includes many lines from famous poems comparing human life to the beautiful but fleeting cherry blossoms. At the same time it points out that human beings resist accepting the fact of life's transcience. This is poignantly illustrated at the end of the kuse when the chorus describes how her sleeves and the hem of her skirts trail in the water as she tries to stop its flow and capture the petals. She performs a dramatic kata with her fan to accompany these words. This movement leads directly into the climatic scene of the play, where she uses a large dipper in an attempt to scoop the petals out of the river. She says:

Precious blossoms, whose fault you scatter so cruelly? Blossoms of sorrow; spiteful winds. Is it because the blossoms scatter that the wind blows, or because the wind blows that the blossoms scatter? Hung with garlands of blossoms, what a glorious sight, the willow-like weeping cherry. Glimpsed through the mist, how beautiful the wild cherry. Blossoms like clouds on Miyoshino. Ah, Miyoshino. Blossoms floating in the pools of Miyoshino River. If I scoop them from the waves perhaps I'll catch a little minnow or a baby trout, known here as blossom fish. Ah, the longing that name evokes. So many things so white: blossoms, fish, snow, white waves. I scoop them all up in my dipper. And yet these are only blossoms from the trees. What I really seek is Sakurago, my beloved Cherry Blossom Boy.

She then learns that the boy with the priests is her son, and they are reunited.

The poetic technique Zeami employs in this play is the tsukushi, a kind of catalogue or enumeration that includes many things relating to cherry blossoms: poems, puns, varieties of cherry, and things named for blossoms. Such virtuoso passages alone lack depth, but in the play they are combined with the mother's love and longing for her son and are chanted as accompaniment for the actions of the shite. Much of the beauty of the play derives from the skillful yoking of the weird, irrational behavior of the deranged woman with highly poetic language and imagery and graceful gestures. The shite's gestures as she attempts to seize the cherry blossoms are beautiful in themselves, but they also point up her obsession with fixity in a world of transience: her desire to stop the flow of time, to grasp beauty, and of course to recapture her son. The action is one that only a person released from the bounds of convention by a frenzied state of mind could perform.

Not all of Zeami's women in love are aristocratic or deranged. Some, in fact, are ordinary women, remarkable only for their conjugal fidelity, like the tsure (a companion) in Ashikari (The Reed Cutter). She was compelled to seek employment in the capital after she and her husband became impoverished, and eventually she prospered. Some years later she returns to search for her husband and discovers him in the humble occupation of reed cutter. They are joyfully reunited and return to the capital together.

Love and marriage are treated sympathetically in Ashikari, and the ending is happy, but not all of Zeami's wives were so fortunate. Kiyotsune, which is an unusual warrior play because the wife has an important tsure role, provides a good example. Having been informed that her husband committed suicide in what was apparently a losing battle, Kiyotsune's wife refuses to accept the keepsake he has left her, since “It would only remind me endlessly of the past.” When her husband appears to her in a dream, they seem to be at cross purposes with each other. She says, in effect, “I hate you because you killed yourself without any thought for me,” and he replies, “I hate you because you refused the keepsake I left for you.” Finally, after the husband relates his tale, the wife's resentment is tempered sufficiently for her to bemoan their fate rather than begrudge his suicide.

The greatest Nō play about a wife is Zeami's Kinuta, a moving and beautiful presentation of love, longing and resentment. The wife has been left in the village of Ashiya in Kyushu for three years while her husband attends to business in the capital. It opens with the husband (the waki) telling the maid Yūgiri (the tsure) to go to Ashiya and inform his wife that he will definitely return home at the end of the year. Yūgiri travels to Kyushu and finds the wife, who has been longing for her husband, angry with her. “Why did you not communicate with me earlier?” she demands. Yūgiri tries to excuse herself on the grounds that she was forced to remain in the capital because of her work, but the wife answers scornfully: “That is nonsense! How can you claim you did not want to remain in the capital, which blossoms with pleasures of all kinds?” She is bitter towards Yūgiri because she enjoyed the capital, and by implication her husband as well. But Yūgiri is a companion, at least, and the wife's real resentment is directed towards her husband, whom she no longer trusts: “If this were a world without any lies, how happy his message would make me.”

The women hear the sound of a kinuta, a fuller's block, and the wife is reminded of the story of a Chinese man named Su Wu who was taken captive by the barbarians. His wife beat a kinuta to relieve her feelings, and the sound carried to her husband thousand of miles away. The Ashiya wife decides to try the same device, hoping that her husband will hear the sounds and think of his home. Her love and her longing are expressed in a lengthy poetic passage that precedes the actual striking of the kinuta. The chorus relates how the sound of the wind, the sobbing of the woman, and the chirping of insects all mingle with the striking of the kinuta, and the two women gracefully bring their fans down on the block as the chorus describes dewdrops and tears falling on the kinuta.

Another messenger arrives from the capital, this time with the announcement that her husband will not arrive by the end of the year after all. This is too much for the wife:

Her sobs weaken, the insect voices fade away in withered fields, tangles of grasses, their flowers blown about by winds which chill her body, confuse her mind. She sinks ever deeper into her sickbed, until at last she passes away, until at last she passes away.

As the chorus sings these words, the shite walks slowly down the hashigakari, leaving this world, and ignoring the imploring gesture and the sobs of Yūgiri, who is left behind. This is a powerful exit and a very moving depiction of death.

In act two, when the husband has finally come home to perform memorial rites for his dead wife using her kinuta as an offering, his wife's ghost appears to him. She is suffering in hell, bound there by her attachment to her husband and her resentment of him. In hell she is tortured and beaten, and appropriately enough, forced to beat upon a kinuta:

Strike it! Strike it! Retribution comes in the form of a kinuta. How hateful the fruits of attachment which brought me to this. Tears for my love fall on the kinuta and there burst into flames. My passion smoulders, choking me with its smoke so that I cannot scream. The kinuta too is soundless. Here there is no wind blowing through the pines. Only the terrible shouts of my tormentors.

She has, she declares, been drawn to appear before him because of the resentment she bears. She berates him: “You unfaithful man, liar, heartless creature. Su Wu at least heard the sound of his wife's beating her kinuta and sent her a letter by wild goose. Why did you not hear the sound of my mallet? I hate you!” The wife points her hand at her husband and weeps while he fingers his prayer beads at though reciting a sutra. The chorus sings the closing lines of the play while the shite's muted movements suggest a glimmer of hope:

Through the efficacy of chanting the Lotus Sutra, through the efficacy of chanting the Lotus Sutra, the way to Buddahood is clearly revealed. The sound of the kinuta, struck to still her passions, opens her heart to Holy Law and sows the seed of her enlightenment, and sows the seed of her enlightenment.

This play, extremely complex in terms of structure, poetic texture, action, and emotions, is so skillfully conceived and executed that it is successful both as literature and as threatre. Especially impressive is the way in which Zeami has integrated the allusion to Su Wu and the action of striking the kinuta. Most of the Chinese story is related in act one, but only near the end of act two are we told that Su Wu not only heard his wife's appeal, but answered it. How much more cause then, does the Ashiya wife have for resentment when the only answer she received was another postponement of her husband's return. Beating the kinuta is an extraordinarily effective action, for it includes sound as well as movement, and Zeami fully developed both possibilities. The kinuta was also on object rich in associations in both Chinese and classical Japanese literature. Moreover it was referred to in many of the popular songs (kouta) of Zeami's day. Within the Nō play, the kinuta functions as a symbol with multiple significance. It symbolizes the classical culture of China and Japan, as well as the common workaday world of villagers. On the psychological level it suggests the unregarded cries of a suffering individual. It also becomes a religious symbol with two aspects, signifying both the agony of souls tormented in hell and the intrusion of an awareness that sets one on the path to enlightenment. In Kinuta Zeami has exploited the full potential of the art of Nō to express a kind of yūgen which goes far beyond mere elegant beauty. It is a play by a dramatist of consummate skill.

Zeami's plays about women are memorable not for their characterizations, but for the beautiful and intense emotions they express. His court ladies, exemplars of elegant beauty, portray touching nostalgia for their past loves. But other women in his plays undergo more extreme suffering as a result of their love experiencing the pain of separation from their loved ones in this world or, suffering in the next world when their attachments have led them to hell. However much ugliness in their lives, all of Zeami's women are beautiful on stage, but their surface beauty has profound and mysterious roots.

Perhaps it was because his culture had no single ideal for women that Zeami was free to use his “feminine style” to portray a wide range of emotions—emotions that seem more powerful and more personal than those depicted in plays with male shite. In his lifetime Zeami knew both the heights of success and the depths of sorrow: his son and heir died young, and in his own old age Zeami was sent into distant exile. Zeami's women in love express the beauty and the sorrow he must have experienced. The central issue, however, is Zeami's artistry, not his personality. His mode of portraying women represents an outstanding achievement in Japanese culture and demonstrates that amalgam of virtuoso technique, powerful emotion, and haunting beauty that is the essence of the Nō theater.