The big bad asses

[xl_target]

One big issue that the Japanese faced were that they were very insular. Very few of them understood the industrial capabilities of the Allies. When Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto warned them about the industrial might of the US and the folly of facing them in an all out war, radical elements in the Japanese Army threatened to kill him and he had to be sent to sea to prevent his assination.
As a young man, Yamamoto had spent considerable time travelling through the US and was quite familiar with conditions here.

Another issue was the code of conduct that they imposed on themselves. Surrender was not an option for many of them. They also dropped troops off in many location in the Pacific and then just left them to their own devices with no option of resupply or relief.

There seemd to be very little "planning ahead" by the military hierarchy. For example they never accelerated their pilot training schedules. They lost their best Naval pilots through attrition and there were never enough adequately trained replacements. The slaughter suffered by the IJN's aircraft and aircrew during "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" showed that the quality of the IJN pilots had seriously deteriorated by that phase of the war. By 1945, the US was producing 100,000 trained pilots a year but by Leyte Gulf, the IJN couldn't field enough pilots to man their carriers. The bait that Halsey took when he went after the Japanese carriers was just that; bait. They were shells of carriers and not really operational as far as air operations were concened.

[essdee1972]

Another issue was the code of conduct that they imposed on themselves. Surrender was not an option for many of them. They also dropped troops off in many location in the Pacific and then just left them to their own devices with no option of resupply or relief.

Even at the end, when they knew the real might of the US, via Little Boy and Fat Man, there was a coup attempt, when the tapes of Emperor Hirohito's radio announcement of surrender were sought to be destroyed by the radicals and they were prevented in doing so by a tiny group of mostly civilian chamberlains and aide-de-camps. The surrender announcement was the first time in history that the Japanese public heard the real voice of their Emperor.