There are 48 lanterns lining the road leading to Zenkoji. Here are numbers 24 and 25, and numbers 1 and 48 are at the end of the road.
What’s the significance of the number 48? That was how many wishes Amitabha made to save various people he encountered. Amitabha’s wishes are engraved on each lantern along with the name of the donor. The donor of the 24th lantern is a famous actress.
Zenkoji is one of the few temples women were allowed to visit during the Edo period. Other holy sites such as Mt. Fuji and Togakushi were forbidden to women, but at Zenkoji they could visit and worship as equals.
So far, both of our stories included women as the main characters in Zenkoji: Princess Nyoze and the Woman and the Cow. Many women have since worshiped at Zenkoji, and this is depicted in a wooden wishing plaque design from the Taisho Era. It depicts a scene of a group of people worshiping in the main hall of Zenkoji Temple, and out of the 23 people in the image, only one of them is male.