The Japanese never wanted to fully engage the United States (or Britain) in a full-on head-to-head contest in the Pacific.
Their aim in the Pearl Harbor attack (and the attack on the Philippines and Malay Peninsula, which were coincident with Pearl Harbor) were meant to discourage the US and the UK from engaging them… in the way that they provoked us into doing. (If they had managed to take out the US aircraft carriers, they may very well have succeeded in delaying the strong US response for two or three years.)
Their successful attacks on Singapore and the British Royal Navy did manage to neutralize direct British participation, although Australia and New Zealand participated directly, and India lent a lot of assistance to the overland supply to China (even prior to Pearl Harbor) to fight the Japanese there.
What was happening in the Pacific prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor was a huge Japanese offensive in China, for which they needed massive quantities of oil, rubber and steel, all of which have to be imported into Japan for processing. FDR embargoed US exports of those products to Japan, so they planned to invade Indonesia and Malaysia (primarily) for their needs. They knew that the US would not permit that, so they wanted us to be in no position to respond to their expanded aggression.