HO-O Phoenix Ceiling Painting for the Higashi-machi Festival Float, Katsushika Hokusai. Color on a paulownia board, 123 x 126.5 cm. Obuse (Japan), Hokusai Museum.

At age 85, Hokusai prepared the RYU (Dragon) and HO-O (Phoenix) 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.

Although 鳳凰 is often translated as Phoenix it really has no connection to the European legend of a bird rising from its own ashes.

Phoenix (Fenghuang, Fènghuáng) is a legendary sacred bird of China. Its story, characters and other symbols are found throughout East Asia over Japan and Korea. Feng is male and Huang is female. The Fenghuang is the ruler of birds, and the legends concerning it tell how birds emerged in this world.

鳳凰（ほうおう、Fènghuáng）は、中国の伝説の鳥、霊鳥である。鳳皇とも。日本や朝鮮など東アジア全域にわたって装飾やシンボルや物語・説話・説教などで登場する。鳳は雄、凰は雌を指し、｢本草綱目｣によれば羽ある生物の王であるとされる。聖天子の出現を待ってこの世に現れるといわれる瑞獣 (瑞鳥) のひとつで、『礼記』では麒麟・霊亀・応龍とともに「四霊」と総称されている。

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 recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s.