I believe that to get Japan, you need some ground pressure too. This means building trannies with us to take islands (even if the tranny is dead, as long as Japan cannot take it back safely, for instance because you can kill the japanese fleet if it goes at the sea zone corresponding to the island, that’s good), and also having more ground units to threat India (at least at long term) and ensure to preserve Africa.
Otherwise, Japan makes too much money, and has mainly to defend against the us only, so ecnomics will make them win the pacific battle after some time.
Here obviously the italian navy was very helpful to defend, but the East Indies IC too ; if I as dice by your sub defense at some time, I could have built the new boat in sz38, and still have some fleet in the pacific.
For a KGF… I’m not a big fan, and dunno if it’s good or not (but may be the good option according to the situation). My early moves with Japan have been made to preserve Europa in case of a KGF (Burma J1 to help Europa, East Indies IC J2 - which I’m not a fan at all).
Maybe being more agressive with Russia could have been better (?) - I mean building more tanks for instance, and perhaps a R1 bomber to take a japan tranny and then trade land territories in Europa, since the key point in Europa was Germany holding Epl (which is a great pressure for Russia with the italian opener threat). After that, the situation in Europa was not the same anymore.
A last point : why building so many DD with UK ? 3 of them are useless I think (2 CA would be more sufficient as there were no real threat for the UK fleet, with the few money Germany was able to do).
Anyway, taht was a close game during at least 8 rounds :)