Tōshō-ji
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Tōshō-ji (東勝寺?) was the Hōjō clan's family temple during the Kamakura period and it was there that the clan (about 870 Hōjō samurai, including the last three Regents) committed collective suicide after Nitta Yoshisada's forces invaded the city in 1333[1]. Its ruins were found in today's Ōmachi[1].
Near the site there's a plaque that says[2]:
National Historic Sites - The remains of Toshoji as designated on July 31, 1998 Toshoji is a Buddhist temple founded in the first half of the 13th Century by Yasutoki Hojo, the third vice-shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate. In 1333, when Yoshisada Nitta and his troops attacked Kamakura, Takatoki Hōjō, all members of his clan, and his followers shut themselves up in this temple, set it on fire, and there, met their tragic death. The temple was restored soon after this incident, and in the Muromachi Era (1392-1467) it came to rank third among the ten most renowned temples in the Kanto area. However, it was said to have been later abandoned in the Sengoku Era (1467-1573). The site is extremely impotant from an historical viewpoint as the remains of the main temple of the Hojo dynasty, and as the final resting place of the Kamakura Shogunate. By a series of excavations conducted in 1976, 1996, and 1997, part of the remains of the temple has been confirmed.
Board of Education, Kamakura City, March 2000
