Yes the Japanese to change naval construction programs during the war, but that might be a misleading answer to your question.

The Japanese did engage in both submarine warfare, and in merchant raiding using surface ships.

In terms of submarine warfare, Japanese doctrine was to focus on destroying the enemy’s combat capability. They did not focus on attempts to intercept convoys of merchant shipping. There were some attempts by the Japanese submarines to take the war to the enemy homeland, but they were more oddball technological efforts like submarines that could carry small airplanes to bomb the enemy homeland. These never amounted to much.

In terms of using surface raider ships, the Japanese did have some early success in the Indian ocean. However as the war progressed, the Japanese actually brought some of those ships back into uses transports. So in fact as the war went along, the Japanese did less merchant raiding not more.

Aside from Japanese naval doctrine, a reason why is that the Pacific Ocean is huge. The area that the Japanese would have been required to patrol and the ranges that they would have required these ships to have, dwarfed the needs of the battle of the Atlantic. Whereas the Germans had, by late 1940s, the ability to base maritime patrol aircraft and surface ships and uboats out of both France and Norway; and at least at the beginning of the war had some hope of using neutral ports in South America and Africa for resupplying commerce raiders, the Japanese would have had to cover vastly larger distances

It’s also worth noting two things. First, the United States implemented a aggressive system of submarine warfare almost immediately, that played havoc with Japanese shipping. These boats did so despite initial problems with torpedo war heads that resulted in a lot of wasted shots. These boats went on very long patrols deep into enemy territory, and many were lost. As the war progressed the United States aggressively attacked Japanese transports whenever possible using air power. So, the United States was much more involved in destroying Japanese merchant shipping than the other way around. And unlike Germany, the Japanese were highly dependent on shipping, both for bringing in extra resources, for movement of men in weapons around the Pacific theater, and even for coastal shipping of goods within the Japanese home islands

The second is that wartime production of naval assets was a very one-sided aspect of the war. Although the Japanese did continue they were construction, finishing a few major ships and building a certain amount of escorts in new merchant shipping, the United States not only replace early losses but built an incredible number of new warships and merchant ships.

So the short answer is: the Japanese understood the concept and saw how it had worked in World War I. They made some attempts at it with surface Raiders. Logistics and geography and doctrine conspired to put convoy rating on the back burner. Meanwhile, the United States was actually very active and disrupting Japanese merchant shipping

edit: dozens of typos