The No repertoire contains five primary categories of plays. There are "god plays," in which the shite is a supernatural spirit, frequently disguised, whose divinity is made manifest during the final dance. In "warrior plays," the _shite _may be a martial figure from the Kamakura era who speaks in universal terms about his own personal tragedy. "Woman plays" are lyric evocations of a beautiful woman, often a courtesan, who has been wronged in love. The fourth category includes a grab bag of dramas often focusing on an historical episode or on the _shite _being driven to madness by guilt or, in the case of a woman, jealousy. Finally, there are "demon plays," in which the shite is a vengeful ogre, often sporting a flowing red or white wig, who erupts into a frenzied dance to demonstrate his supernatural displeasure over some event. Many of the classic plays are a study of the tortured mental world of the dead. Even in warrior plays and woman plays the central character is frequently a spirit from the nether world who returns to chronicle a grievance or to exact some form of retribution from a living individual. Plot is deliberately suppressed. Instead of a story, the play explores an emotional experience or a state of mind--hatred, love, longing, fear, grief, and occasionally happiness. The traditional components of Western drama--confrontation, conflict, characterization, self-realization, development, resolution--are almost entirely absent. In their place is the ritualized reading of an emotional state that rarely grows or resolves during the play; it is simply described. The artistic content of the No is embodied in the masks, dances, and poetry, all of which deserve to be examined. The masks carved for the No drama are the only representative sculptured art form of Zen; indeed, Zen was basically responsible for the disappearance of a several-hundred-year-old tradition of Buddhist sculpture in Japan. During the late Kamakura era, Japanese wood sculpture went through a phase of startling realism; but the Zen monks had no use for icons or statues of Buddhist saints, and by the beginning of the Ashikaga era Japanese statuary was essentially a thing of the past. However, the Japanese genius for wood carving had a second life in the No masks. No plays required masks for elderly men, demons, and sublime women of all ages. (The No rigidly excluded women from the stage, as did the Kabuki until recent times.)