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Prince Moriyoshi, son of Emperor Go-Daigo and Seii Taishōgun under the Kenmu Restoration, was confined in Kamakura after a falling-out with Ashikaga Takauji and killed amid the chaos of the Nakasendai Disturbance in Kenmu 2 (1335) on the orders of Ashikaga Tadayoshi. His son by Lady Minami (daughter of Fujiwara no Yasutō), the priest Nichiei, later took Buddhist orders and, drawn to the legacy of Saint Nichiren, in Enbun 2 (1357) built halls on the site of Nichiren's Matsubagayatsu hermitage to memorialize his father and formally founded Myōhōji. Prince Moriyoshi's tomb is enshrined at the summit on the right side of the precinct, while the tombs of his mother Lady Minami and Nichiei himself stand together at the summit on the left — silent witnesses to the tragedy of father and son. The mountain name 'Ryōgonzan' derives from Nichiei's childhood name Ryōgonmaru.

Kamakura-gu was founded in 1869 by imperial decree on the very site — the former Tokoji Temple — where Prince Moriyoshi was imprisoned in a dungeon for some nine months and executed on July 23, 1335, on the orders of Ashikaga Tadayoshi. Moriyoshi is the shrine's sole object of worship. The dungeon behind the main hall is the actual place of his imprisonment; the treasure hall holds surviving imperial proclamations and a mounted statue of the prince. The Taiheiki's account of Moriyoshi biting through the assassin's blade — resisting even at the moment of death — made him the symbol of unwavering loyalty to the imperial cause that the Meiji government sought to enshrine as a national ideal.