Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "The Drydock - Episode 142" video.
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Part of the Kantai Kessen doctrine was the assumption that the enemy forces, whether US or UK, would be coming at them with a superiority of forces. The plan to deal with this was the "whittling down" tactics. Subs would start this, so they were positioned way ahead and had to preserve their torpedoes for the major targets like battleships and carriers. Long-ranged land-based naval air units were also a part of the advanced forces, as well as hit-and-run attacks by the carrier forces aimed at the enemy carrier fleet. Training in night operations was focused on the lighter forces so that they could take part in "whittling down" the enemy main fleet before it could get to the critical area, where it would finally be met by the battleship line in Main Battle.
The ironic part of all this is that this is exactly what the US did to the Japanese in the cascading battles around Leyte Gulf - subs and aircraft doing long-range recon and getting early hits in (goodbye flagship Atago), air power being used to whittle down the incoming heavies (goodbye Musashi), then the climactic clash of the battle lines - which sort-of happened at Surigao (there wasn't much left of the Japanese battle line), but not at San Bernardino like it should have, thanks to Halsey's distraction and mis-communications. It was left to the little guys, again, to hold the line until the big ones could come back - but then the enemy lost their nerve, gave up and sailed away.
Which is probably what Kantai Kassen was aiming for, even if they could not "whittle down" the enemy fleet enough to defeat it like at Tsushima. But the single-minded focus on preparing, equipping, and training for this war-winning clash, and the glory gained in making sure your own attack damaged one of the enemy's primary ships, explains a lot of Japanese actions, from the airmen's over-focus on battleships at Pearl Harbor, the sub's over-focus on carriers and battleships around Guadalcanal at the expense of all the smaller supply ships allowed to slip through, to the light-weight construction and lack of armor in Japanese naval aircraft (in order to increase their range and maneuverability). Escorting civilian merchantmen was hardly thought about before the war, despite the stark example of what the U-boats did to their former ally the UK in WW1 and their similarity as island nations needing overseas resources. Vital destroyers could not be spared from their jobs with the fleet, and no one had built any dedicated escorts until they were forced to by increasing losses. Radar and sonar were neglected until they saw how the Allies were using them to defeat their highly-trained forces. And they did not have the training program, particularly for airmen, to replace their losses because they were hoping their pre-war plan would be enough to either bring them a quick, decisive victory or so bloody the enemy that they had to fall back and end up in a stalemate.
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