page_title: Kamakura
section_title: Fall of the Kamakura shogunate
hierarchical_section_title: Kamakura / History / Kamakura period / Fall of the Kamakura shogunate
caption_attribution_description: Site where the Hojo clan barricaded in their family temple, killed themselves and burned the place to the ground after their defeat in 1333.
context_page_description: Kamakura is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
  Kamakura has an estimated population of 172,302 and a population density of 4,358.77 persons per km² over the total area of 39.53 km². Kamakura was designated as a city on 3 November 1939.
  Kamakura was the de facto capital of Japan from 1185 to 1333 as the seat of the Kamakura Shogunate, and became the nation's most populous settlement from 1200 to 1300 during the Kamakura period. Kamakura is a popular domestic tourist destination in Japan as a coastal city with a high number of seasonal festivals, as well as ancient Buddhist and Shinto shrines and temples.
context_section_description: On July 3, 1333, warlord Nitta Yoshisada, who was an Emperor loyalist, attacked Kamakura to reestablish imperial rule. After trying to enter by land through the Kewaizaka Pass and the Gokuraku-ji Pass, he and his forces waited for a low tide, bypassed the Inamuragasaki cape, entered the city and took it.
  In accounts of that disastrous Hōjō defeat it is recorded that nearly 900 Hōjō samurai, including the last three Regents, committed suicide at their family temple, Tōshō-ji, whose ruins have been found in today's Ōmachi. Almost the entire clan vanished at once, the city was sacked and many temples were burned. Many simple citizens imitated the Hōjō, and an estimated total of over 6,000 died on that day of their own hand. In 1953, 556 skeletons of that period were found during excavations near Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's Ichi no Torii in Yuigahama, all of people who had died of a violent death, probably at the hand of Nitta's forces.
caption: This field is the former site of Tōshō-ji, the Hōjō family temple. In 1333, the Hōjō clan committed mass suicide here.
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