As critically esteemed as they were, Ozu’s many pictures of the 1930s were not conspicuously successful at the box office. During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1941) and the Pacific War (1941–1945), Ozu directed only two films—"Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family" ("Toda-ke no Kyodai", 1941) and "There Was a Father" ("Chichi Ariki", 1942)—but these became his most popular works up to that time. It has been surmised that the public embraced them because the family themes Ozu had always favored suddenly were in full accord with official government ideology. In his book about the Japanese film industry during wartime, Peter B. High writes that though "There Was a Father" was "made in strict accordance to the ideological requirements of the Pacific War era, film is one of the few such films to be recognized as an artistic masterwork today."