Hideyoshi's adopted heir was forced to kill himself after a son was born, and 39 of his wives, children and servants were beheaded in Kyoto

Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan. In 1591, after his heir died, he made his nephew Hidetsugu his successor and Imperial Regent. In 1593 Hideyoshi had a son, Hideyori, and relations with Hidetsugu broke down. In 1595 Hidetsugu was accused of plotting a coup and ordered to kill himself on Mount Kōya. He did so at Seigan-ji on 20 August 1595, aged 28. His head was taken to Fushimi, and Hideyoshi inspected it the next day. On 5 September his children, wives, concubines, attendants and nurses were beheaded on the Sanjō riverbank in Kyoto, 39 people by the Japanese Wikipedia's count^†, with his head set above them. Among them was Komahime, 15, daughter of the lord Mogami Yoshiaki; the Mogami later sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu. The bodies went into one pit under a mound whose stone read "Hidetsugu the traitor"; people called it the Beasts' Mound. Hideyoshi demolished Hidetsugu's palace, the Jurakudai, and filled its moat. The senior retainers held by other lords were ordered to die. A Kamo River flood later washed the mound away. In 1611 the merchant Suminokura Ryōi found the stone, erased the word "traitor" and founded Zuisen-ji on the site. Historians see the killings as a cause of the Toyotomi clan's decline. In 2024 the Kyoto National Museum showed the temple's Hidetsugu treasures for his 430th memorial.