Actually the latest Jap aircraft were every bit as good as ours but they came too late. KI-84 and N1K2 being the two best examples.
The Jap Zero, unrivaled among carrier based fighters at the start of the war, weighed about as much as your SUV and produced 940 horsepower. If you can imagine driving an SUV with 940 hp, that’s what handling the Zero was like.