William Sturgis Bigelow (1850–1926) was a prominent American collector of Japanese art. The art collection trips he funded in the 1880s helped to form the standards by which Japanese art and culture were appreciated in the West. In 1909, Bigelow was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Third Class, by Emperor Meiji. A trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts (1891-1926), he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1911. Early career Bigelow was the son of Henry Jacob Bigelow, a prominent Boston surgeon. Bigelow received his degree in medicine from Harvard University in 1874 and continued his medical studies in Europe for five years under Louis Pasteur. His primary interest was bacteriology, but when his father pressured him to follow him into surgery, Bigelow abandoned a medical career altogether. Travels in Japan (1882–89) Bigelow began collecting Japanese art as a student in Paris. In 1882, inspired by lectures on Japan delivered by Edward Sylvester Morse, Bigelow traveled to Japan. Once there, he funded Morse's work and that of Ernest Fenollosa, another young Harvard graduate teaching in Boston. Bigelow remained in Japan for seven years. With authorization from the Japanese government, Bigelow, Morse, and Fenollosa, were able to explore parts of Japan closed to outside viewers for centuries. The group visited the Treasure House of Tōdai-ji, viewing hidden treasures of Emperor Shōmu, and were granted a few shards of pottery, the only items belonging to the Shōsō-in known to currently reside outside of it. Among the many items he obtained during his time in Japan were a set of gilt bronze statues of the historical Buddha from Hōryū-ji, known as the Shaka Trinity statues, and a mandala from the Hokke-do of Tōdai-ji, one of the oldest Japanese paintings to ever leave Japan. Morse collected ancient ceramics, Bigelow collected armor, and Fenollosa collected paintings. Returning to the United States, Bigelow donated approximately 75,000 objects of Japanese art to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The donations gave the Museum of Fine Arts the largest collection of Japanese art anywhere outside Japan, a distinction it still holds today. In traveling through Japan and forming their collections, Bigelow and his Boston colleagues were helped by one of Fenollosa's students, Okakura Kakuzō. Inspired by the Westerners' admiration for Japanese aristocratic tradition and with funding from Bigelow, Okakura founded the Nihon Bijutsuin, a fine arts academy, to preserve and