The long and the short of it is that the Japanese deployed their tanks throughout all combat theaters they fought in. And this spread out deployment denuded the Japanese tank arm of whatever combat effectiveness it possessed.

Japanese industry was never really able to master production for tanks. Not only did the IJA have to compete with the IJN for steel, the Army's weapon design bureaus were conservative. Japanese tanks were lightly armed and armored utilizing riveted armor and small caliber cannons. Alvin Coox would tartly observe Japanese tanks by the time of the Sino-Japanese War were "handcrafted, beautifully polished, and hoarded." Now such tank designs were typical for the 1930s, but Japanese tank design remained comparatively stagnant. Reports of German successes with panzers in 1940 prompted some rethinking along the lines of heavier designs, but there was little headway made. Blockade runners managed to smuggle two Panzer IIIs to the Home Islands in 1943, and the Japanese bought (after considerable foot-dragging by their German allies) a Panther and Tiger I for technical evaluation, but there was no way to ship it to Japan as the Allied naval blockade became ever tighter.

The result of this situation was that tank to tank combat was very uncommon in the Pacific theater. This was partly a function of geography; the terrain (jungles, mountains, islands) inhibited the deployment of large numbers of tanks by either side. But the anemic state of Japan's tank arm also played a significant role in the relatively rare armored encounters. Japanese production of tanks and self-propelled guns from 1941-1945 numbered only 5,495. By contrast, the US produced over 100,000 and Germany approximately 50,000.

The Asian continent saw largest deployment of Japanese tanks. The IJA found tanks useful in attacks against the Chinese forces. But again, the sheer variety of terrain coupled with the technical limitations of Japanese tanks meant this was not a tank war. The IJA tended to use tanks as adjuncts for infantry-based offensives. The post-1940 revision of tank doctrine bore some fruit in the Ichi-go offensive of 1944 where the IJA's 3rd Tank Division and several armored regiments conducted mobile warfare. But most of the IJA's use of tanks in China was defensive rather than offensive in nature. Tanks were used as mobile pillboxes protecting Japanese lines of communications. Japan kept the bulk of its tanks in Manchuria to defend against a possible Soviet invasion of the region.

The highwater mark of the IJA tank arm was not in Chinese battlefields, but Malaya though. The IJA had conceived of tanks for shock action during their initial offensive drive. The initial Japanese offensive in 1941/42 all used tanks in this fashion, but they proved especially effective in Malaya. The British had concluded that tanks were ineffective there, but the lighter Japanese tanks were able to operate on this terrain. The light and medium tanks were able to achieve breakthroughs in Commonwealth defensive lines and helped enable swift mobile operations in the peninsula. The tank here helped Japanese forces to achieve victory quickly.

The Japanese also used tanks in its invasions of the Philippines and Dutch East Indies. The Japanese 4th Tank Regiment's Type 95 tanks encountered the 192nd Tank Battalion's M3s in the Philippines on 22 December 1941. This was one of the few times in the Pacific War where Japanese tanks meet their opposite on a relatively equal footing both in quantity and quality.

The Japanese also deployed its tanks and tankettes in penny packets in its advance in the Southwest Pacific. But rather than falling victim to American tanks, these lightly-armored vehicles tended to be knocked out by anti-tank artillery, such as the Marines' 37mm guns which stopped a Japanese armored attack in Guadalcanal while the Japanese crossed the Matanika River.

Tank to tank combat increased as the Americans pierced Japan's inner defense perimeter. Both Guam and Saipan featured organized Japanese tank battalions form the 9th Tank Regiment. The best Japanese tank in the Marianas, the Type 97-Kai Shinhoto Chi-Ha was no match for the Marines' newly organized tank units and combined arms doctrine. These battles were often one-sided defeats . There are apocryphal stories of American units discovering that armor-piercing ammunition was ineffective against Japanese tanks because they were too lightly armored the AP shells went through their target before exploding.

The largest clashes of tanks for the Pacific War would occur in Luzon between 1944 and 1945, where the Japanese 2nd Tank Division faced the hopeless task of defending the Philippines. The same script repeated itself: poor quality and obsolescent tanks fell afoul of Allied combined arms and general superiority. A sign of the desperation and impotence of the Japanese tank arm was in April 1945. Yamashita's headquarters were defended by the 2nd Division's five remaining tanks and were equipped with frontal charges so they could be rammed in a kamikaze attack on oncoming Shermans.

Aside from losing the battle of both quantity and quality, the Japanese did not keep apace of the evolution of tank doctrine that the Second World War ushered in. The Japanese tanks seldom deployed with a sufficient infantry component and the Japanese Army preferred to break up armored formations into smaller units. The latter exacerbated the technical shortcomings of Japanese tanks as since poor Japanese radios meant such small units had little influence on the battlefield. August Storm, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, caught the Japanese units flat-footed and managed to capture 369 of the Kwantung Army's tanks because Soviet units could breakthrough and surround the relatively static Japanese formations.

Although it was uncommon, the results of the Japanese use of armor against Allied tanks was often the same: defeat.

Sources

Peattie, Mark R., Edward J. Drea, and Hans J. Van de Ven. The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013.

Rottman, Gordon. World War II Japanese Tank Tactics. Oxford: Osprey, 2011.

Zaloga, Steve, and Peter Bull. Japanese Tanks: 1939-45. Oxford: Osprey, 2007.

Zaloga, Steve. M4 Sherman Vs Type 97 Chi-Ha: The Pacific 1945. Oxford: Osprey, 2012.