You're defined by your enemies. Japan chosed her enemies well. Warlord China and Colonial Police. The one true enemy who can stomped her, the USSR, was too busy fighting for her life against Nazi Germany.
A lot of it is cultural. You do things by the book. Do not question authority and the authorities were those who written the books. Japanese armoured forces is a reflection of that. The Japanese first imported tanks and doctrine from the French in the 1930s. At that time, French tanks and thinking were developed as answers to WWI problems, ie infantry support, to get the infantry across no-man's land and through the trenches.
It was the British and the Soviets who saw tanks as a calvary force. The Japanese had zero calvary decisive maneuver force experience. They were clobbered during WWII by Chinese Mongolian horse calvary. But since the Japanese were never clobbered by calvary in their historic experience, they ignored its true nature, espeically since the world has never seen armoured calvary before.
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