Nah, he was at most a moderately competent general who knew what he was doing.
Which is probably the best that could be said of any IJA generals.
The IJA had very good
tactical Generals. Not many good
strategical ones (Yokoyama was a decent IJA strategical one). Edit: Making this a list because it looks bloated:
Shojiro Iida (was the reason the Japanese were able to conquer Burma and actually threaten India initially despite being completely undersupplied, out gunned, out numbered, and with no air superiority)
Teruchi Hischi (did a lot in the initial parts of the Sino War)
Yamashita (who's completely overplayed, while he did do a lot, it needs to be noted the Fall of Singapore was largely because the British had no idea Yamashita was going to run out of supplies in <3 days)
Hata Shunroku and Okamura Yasuji (the guys that did that conducted the insane Operation Ichi-go while with pretty much nothing but what they can steal from the people)
Kimura Heitaro (is the reason the British weren't able to help China or get back any of their shit despite once again, being against a guy leading an army of guerrillas with no food or ammunition source who is forced to scavenge for everything. He's the guy that also trained the Viets)
etc. were all amazing tactically and did whatever the General Staff told them to do no matter how insane. The problem was both the inner politics of the Generals (Off the top of my head Tojo replaced Iida with one of his friends who proceeded to pretty much lose his entire army in a single battle. Yamashita's situation as well, was restationed to being a garrison commander in Manchuria because the nobles hated his guts) was absolutely abhorrent.
After the ass kicking by the soviets in manchuria in august 1945 Japan must rank among the weaker land powers. Singapore was surrendered in disgrace by yet another incompetent British army officer. They didn't even put up a fight so it's easy to win against that.
This is insane. While yes, initially Manchuria was going to be the last stand location should Japan itself fall and was supposed to be impregnable it turned out taking on so many people on at once they needed replacements, obviously lets not draft more people but take men from the garrisons in Manchuria! Which left Manchuria being manned by an ill fed and supplied skeleton crew which led to the Japanese using reservists and militias to actually man posts (even if they did no have enough arms to give them). When the Soviets invaded anyone that did not immediately run to the Soviets (I honestly don't know why, but the Japanese liked the idea of surrendering to the Soviets more than the Americans), would retreat.
Now Ushiroku Jun, commander of the Japanese forces, did order a defense at Hsinking and Hailar but it was relatively ignored by most of the soldiers.