Wright first sailed to Japan in 1905 and came home with several hundred Hiroshige woodcuts, returned in 1913 to buy on commission for two Boston collectors, and spent 1917 to 1922 in Tokyo building the Imperial Hotel, treating print-buying as his “constant recreation” between drafting sessions. By his death in 1959 he owned roughly 6,000 of them. He was perpetually short of cash; his estate kept selling prints for years afterward just to cover the debts and taxes he’d run up.