I read Saburo Sakai's book many years ago, and one particular incident left a strong impression. During his pilot training in the 1930's, before the war, all of the cadets were formed into two lines, each facing each other. The cadets in one line were then commanded to strike their opposite number in the face as hard as they could. Then, it was the other line's turn to do the same. This went on for multiple rounds. The idea, was, apparently, to toughen up the recruits and weed out those who could not take the pain. This would seem superfluously cruel, but later Sakai was severely wounded in the face during a dogfight, and had to escape by fling semi-conscious and with only one eye for hunderes of miles.
The book is a good read.
Yes, good read, I also read it many years ago.
One of the problems with Japanese Navy pilot training before and during the war was that they refused to shorten the training period, to have more pilots in cockpits, as every other country involved did.
As a result, by 1944, the Japanese navy have few pilots left, not even enough to man all the aircraft on the few aircraft carriers they had left. What few pilots they did have, had very little experience.