Feminine Wave Ceiling Painting for the Kan-machi Festival Float, Katsushika Hokusai. Colour on a paulownia board, 118 x 118.5 cm. Obuse (Japan), Hokusai Museum.

In 1844, at age 85, Hokusai prepared paintings on the Higashi-machi Festival Float over a six-month period. Two festival floats (designated official treasure of Nagano Prefecture) with Hokusai's paintings attached to their ceiling are stored and displayed in the Hokusai Museum in Obuse, a town in central Japan.

The following year Hokusai returned to Obuse to paint the DOTO Angry Waves and decorate the Kan-machi Festival float. The designs that frame the pictures were coloured by Takai Kozan based on sketches by Hokusai. The float is ornamented with carvings based on an old Chinese tale SUIKODEN in which a warrior pulls out his sword and chants his mantra, sending a dancing dragon to heaven. The carvings were designed and directed by Hokusai. The warrior image was carved by a local craftsman, Kamehara Wadashiro, and the dragon was carved by an Edo doll maker, Matsugoro. The two-tier festival float with wheels is 4.84 m tall, 2.4 m wide, and over 3.85 m long.

Historically, the Obuse five-town festival floats have been gathered and paraded through local towns during shrine festivals. And since 1925, they had been displayed only once every ten years at a garden at Obuse's local community hall. These particular floats do not require nails and are usually disassembled for storage. Assembling takes an entire day with several men from all parts of town working on the floats. When they are taken apart, the parts are coated with walnut oil, covered with cotton, and wrapped with oil paper before being stored. Since the establishment of the Hokusai Museum in 1976, Higashi-machi and Kan-machi festival floats have been maintained while on display at the museum site.

Katsushika Hokusai (October or November 1760–May 10, 1849 was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. In his time, he was Japan's leading expert on Chinese painting. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best-known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, c. 1831, which includes the iconic and internationally recognised print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s.