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The IJN was trained by the British, the IJA was trained by the Germans.  The latter had more political influence, and of course was deep into China where they acted as warlords.  There was no practical way they would pull back.  Tojo of course was IJA and they had military as well as political influence.  The IJN could do the math, as it were.

Hitler of course viewed Americans as soft, mongrel raced, and unable to do much beyond building refigerators (I know that quote was from Goring).

The rapidity with which the US economy went to a war footing is one of the most astounding features of the war.

Another thing that I've always found fascinating is just how short the window in which attacking the US, British, and Dutch even seemed plausibility like a good idea was.

The Pearl Harbor raid utilized all six of Japan's fleet carriers. The two newest of those were the Shokaku Class Carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku. They were commissioned in August and September of 1941 respectively. 

They needed all six to be able to neutralize the various airfields around Pearl Harbor at the outset of the attack. Thus, the attack was only feasible once Shokaku and Zuikaku were fully operational. 

The other end of this window was defined by events involving no Japanese forces and occurring thousands of miles away. Japanese involvement in WWII only made sense from a Japanese perspective so long as prospects of Axis victory in Europe seemed good. 

Even the lunatics running the IJA had at least some comprehension of the fact that they couldn't actually win a war against China, the US, Britain, and the Netherlands in the long run. They thought, however, that with the Netherlands occupied by Germany and Britain distracted by a desperate struggle for survival at home, that they would be able to grab some Pacific islands while everyone was otherwise distracted. 

The Soviet counter-offensive outside Moscow began on December 5, 1941. That date being so close to Pearl Harbor is NOT altogether coincidental. Richard Sorge, perhaps the greatest spy in history informed the Kremlin that Japan would be attacking the US and, more importantly to Stalin, that Japan would NOT attack the Soviets. The Soviet troops that conducted the Moscow counter-offensive were mostly pulled from the Soviet far East on the basis of Sorge's reassurance that they were not needed there.

Anyway, the Soviet offensive began to see concrete success in mid-December, 1941 with the recapture of various areas and towns. 

Once to German offensive was definitely stalled and the Russian counter-offensive began to show that the Russians had survived the initial assault intact and still able to fight the prospects for Axis success in Europe dimmed considerably. 

If the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had been delayed by as little as a month, cooler heads might have prevailed in Tokyo because hitching Japan's star to Hitler's Germany would have seemed much less like a good idea.

I hypothesize that this traces back to our taking the PI after the Spanish American war.  I think the Japanese attacked us to secure the PI and their shippig lanes to SE Asia.  Had the PI been independent (or Spanish), that would not have been necessary.

This is absolutely correct. In fact, when the US was retaking the Philippines the Japanese determined that they were more important that the fleet. This was because the Philippines were between the Japanese oil supply and their home islands. The fleet was useless without the Philippines as they would either be in the DEI where they had fuel or in the home islands where they had ammunition and repair facilities but they couldn't get both without the Philippines. 

Interestingly, late in the war, IJN ships sailed out with unrefined crude from Borneo.  This works "OK", sort of, but the lighter components are very prone to burning if ignited.

Surigao Strait if memory serves.

Yep, they didn't have transport capacity to get the crude to the refineries and the refined oil to the ships so they just sent the ships to the oilfields (Borneo) and filled the tanks. 

The flammability issue may have contributed to the loss of some ships but realistically the ships were going to be lost anyway so the only choice was to lose them idled for lack of fuel or lose them fighting. 

The Japanese fuel situation was catastrophically bad. I read once about a tank farm that the USAAF and USN bombed repeatedly. US forces were trying to get the fuel to ignite and never managed to achieve that goal despite repeated efforts. Postwar the Strategic Bombing Survey found out why: The tanks were bone dry and had been for years.

FACT OF THE DAY:

Rand McNally once sued another map maker for copyright infringement because of the reproduction of an imaginary town Agloe they invented in New York. This "paper town" was created only as a trap for this purpose. The defendants prevailed, because the town later came into existence using the name that Rand McNally gave it. That town has since vanished again.

The Zimmermann Telegram

This secret note, sent by German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to the US, said that in the event of war, Mexico should be asked to join as a German ally in return for Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. British intelligence intercepted and deciphered the note and sent it to President Wilson. This helped turn US public opinion against Germany during WWI and strengthened advocates of US entry into the war.