Susan Blakeley Klein demonstrates how medieval esoteric commentaries on the tenth-century poem-tale Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise) and the first imperial waka poetry anthology Kokin wakashu influenced the plots, characters, imagery, and rhetorical structure of seven plays (Maiguruma, Kuzu no hakama, Unrin'in, Oshio, Kakitsubata, Ominameshi, and Haku Rakuten) and two treatises (Zeami's Rikugi and Zenchiku's Meishukushu). In so doing, she shows that it was precisely the allegorical mode - vital to medieval Japanese culture as a whole - that enabled the complex layering of character and poetic landscape we typically associate with noh.