Buddhism and the political and economical stratification of late medieval Japanese society had a profound influence on the Nô theatre. These religious and social forces shaped the internal conflict of playwrights between their desire to weave social commentary into their artistry and the need to cater to the tastes of their patrons. The negotiation between the two forces is dynamic as the play continues to be performed by different performers for different audiences in different context. The textual analysis of Nô plays not only helps us understand the social and cultural context in which plays were written, but also think about the significance of the continuity as they are still performed today.
It is within constraints such as these that protest against unfair treatment of the oppressed and displays of passion and grief are intensified in the form of the madness of a restless spirit, typified in the Nô play Kinuta (The Fulling Block). The woman in Kinuta grumbles about her husband's prolonged absences. Such complaints, on one hand, give us a glimpse of a women's discontent over the unfair treatment she is receiving. On the other hand, it conveys a tacit criticism against the social institutions by which one's fate is swayed.
The madness of the woman's spirit is what makes the expression of desire and protest in the first act permissible and allows the madwoman's spirit to reproach her husband directly in the second act. The use of madness in Kinuta thus provides openings for otherwise suppressed feminine subjectivities and sexuality, giving audiences a glimpse of resistance to patriarchal oppression by a female character. I argue the expression of resistance within constraints may be what has made Nô plays with a madwoman protagonist such as Kinuta popular with audiences then and now.