It is indeed a common trope to show the Japanese as being utterly stuck in their ways, ever unchanging, while the US constantly updated. While there are definitely examples of the Japanese relying more heavily on their existing methods (or even repeating successful tactics), this is not to say that the IJN was unable to change. In fact, as Evans and Peattie note in their retrospective on the Pacific War at the conclusion of Kaigun, by 1943, the IJN had effectively abandoned pre-war doctrine in their efforts to adjust to the changing demands of the Pacific War.

To provide an example, the IJN did indeed change its tactics dramatically in the aftermath of Midway. While the IJN and government did indeed engage in a massive coverup operation to conceal the scale of the disaster from the public, the rest of the Navy, and even the Japanese army, the IJN did not simply ignore the outcome of the battle. In the carrier battles that would follow, the IJN began to change their deployment tactics, generally having a light carrier focused entirely on fleet defense accompany their fleet carrier divisions, while also altering their deployment of escorts. From 1943 on, Japanese mobile formations began to forward deploy many of their heavier units, creating an advanced force that would operate between the IJNs carriers and the enemy. This deployment was meant to provide early warning for Japanese carriers, as hopefully any inbound attack would have to overfly the advanced force, and potentially even divert some attackers into striking the more resilient battleships rather than the carriers. Similarly, as the war progressed, the Japanese would mount more and more anti-aircraft weapons to their ships. Throughout 1944, many of the Fubuki class destroyers saw two of their double Type 3 127 mm guns removed, in order to make room for more Type 96 25 mm AA guns. Similarly, the two Yamato class saw extensive retrofits designed to increase their anti-aircraft firepower, with two of their 155 mm Type 3 gun turrets removed to make room for more heavy and light AA. This general trend is repeated on many IJN warships, with them featuring increasing numbers of AA weaponry as the war progressed. While the Type 96 is infamous for its lack of effectiveness, the Japanese were certainly eager to put as many of them as possible on every square inch of their ships as they could, even removing some of their anti-surface firepower to make more square inches to add more light AA.

So why the stereotype?

The IJN as a whole was a very top-heavy, front-loaded organisation. By which I mean that it was institutionally focused on battle at the expense of almost all else. The IJN dedicated itself into producing a capable battle fleet, without the necessary logistical, supply, or industrial base to truly support the kind of force they put together. This was not only the case with industrial output, as Japan's dockyards were squeezed out by military production, severely limiting the number of merchant ships Japan could lay down, but also with human capital and institutional inertia as well. Every officer in the IJN strove for assignment to a combatant command, and so only those deemed incapable of holding such a command were assigned to things such as ASW, logistics, and the like. Moreover, because of the strong preference for combat positions and officers, even when those who did hold rear area commands put forth ideas, they were often dismissed out of hand. A fine example of this can be seen with the formation of Grand Escort Headquarters to try and consolidate control of the IJNs convoy escort vessels, only to find itself subordinated to Combined Fleet, which immediately saw the escort carriers as additional flight decks to be thrown at the Americans and treated them as such.

Beyond these institutional factors, Japan's human capital resources were limited from the output. Everyone is familiar with the story of how the Japanese navy's vaunted pre-war flight corps were whittled down without replacements until the teeth of Japanese naval aviation had been completely eroded away, but the issue went deeper than that. Japan in the late-1930s and 40s was simply not as industrialised as we might expect. While the US Navy could likely expect their average recruit to have a degree of familiarity with machinery and other advanced technology, the Japanese would have to train mechanics out of recruits from rural Japan who had never used anything with an internal combustion engine before. This meant that nearly every member of the IJN was irreplaceable, at least if the fleet was to maintain the quality it planned to rely on to maintain an advantage over the numerically superior Americans. These limitations meant that many of the jurry-rigged measures that popped up amongst the Americans were not seen in Imperial Japanese service. One example recounted by American personnel examining Japanese airbases after the end of the war was the high rate of failures that were theoretically fixable by stripping another aircraft, but Japanese mechanics hadn't developed a system to do so (i.e. instead of stripping one aircraft of spare parts to repair another, resulting in 1 functional aircraft, the Japanese would often leave both awaiting replacement parts, rendering both aircraft inoperable). These issues were exacerbated as the war went on, not only by casualties, but also by experienced ground crews being isolated in bypassed forward bases. This was not helped by the IJN's tendency to act as a top-down institution, with the end result of most change being pressed from the top down. This similar limitation on human capital meant that Japan's home scientific base was much more limited, which delayed the adoption and integration of technology like radar into Japanese service.

Of course, there is of course the issue of Japanese industrial output. Japan's output was limited at the start of the war, and was simply never able to match the Americans in either quantity or quality of goods produced. This manifested itself in any number of ways, not only in terms of ship hulls and aircraft produced, but also in terms of construction equipment and materials for establishing and fortifying air bases, and the kind of steel alloys that allowed for high performance aircraft engines. While the Japanese constantly strove to improve their equipment, incorporating more firepower, more powerful engines, the limitations on the Japanese industrial and economic base meant that these improvements were slow to be developed and deployed. Aircraft to replace the A6M, B5N, and D3A were all in development from fairly early in the way, but limitations in Japanese economic power meant that their replacements arrived in a classic case of too little, too late.

All these factors are relevant in that they provided severe limitations to what the Japanese could do. While they almost certainly would have loved to fit all their destroyers with radar guided fire control and things like the 40 mm Bofors that festooned American ships, Japan simply did not have the economic base to support these changes. Japan was effectively stuck with what it had.

Finally, of course, there is plain and simple racism, which should not be discounted. While this is not a topic I am particularly knowledgeable one, it is something that should be addressed (and hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me can help expand on it). There was undoubtedly a strong streak of anti-Asian racism in the United States prior to the Pacific War, with the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 19th century and the Immigration Act of 1924 blocking immigration from East Asia. /u/historiagrephour has done a very large piece on the history of anti-Asian racism in the US here. I cannot go on here, since it's a topic I'm not familiar with, but suffice it to say, racist fears that all Japanese were automatons loyal to the Emperor existed prior to the war, and such narratives almost certainly had an effect on how American soldiers, sailors, and airmen viewed their opponent.

As far as additional works on the Pacific War, if you're interested in the Imperial Japanese Navy, then the go to book remains David Evans & Mark Peattie's Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941, and the companion piece Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941. Another excellent work is John Lundstrom's two volume The First Team, which covers Pacific aerial combat from Pearl Harbor through the Guadalcanal campaign. All of these are sources I relied upon extensively in drafting this answer.

I hope this has helped answer your question, and pleas feel free to ask any follow ups.