“A good selection of the latest scholarship by European, North American, and Japanese researchers. . . . An appealing aspect of the work is its multidisciplinary scope: essays on political history dominate, but the inclusion of several on religion, women, peasants, and literature add considerably to our understanding of the fouteenth century.”—Monumenta Nipponica
“The work is a valuable tool for the speacialist, for it provides information about a period woefully under-represented by English works. . . . Origins is to be commended for presenting a reevaluation of the relationship between the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, a process that in-and-of itself aids in understanding the complexity that was fourteenth centufy Japan.”—Canadian Journal of History