Of course they failed miserably by hitting the legacy battleships and missing the carriers which fit better with modern doctrine.
Weak isn't the right word. The Japanese navy was world class as far back as 1905, when they crushed the Russians at Tsushima. It's true that the Japanese navy wasn't on par with the US Navy, but then the US Navy was more powerful than all other navies combined by the end of the war.
Vaguely related - the Russian journey to Tsushima [1] is quite interesting (in the sense of watching a train wreck occur). It includes the Dogger Bank incident [2] which nearly incited war with Britain. Fascinating stuff.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220312131211/https://www.hullw...
That would have been a major disaster. Pearl Harbor was just an irritant and catalyst.
First of all, take a look at the map [1] of Perl Harbor from wikipedia. The oil storage tanks are listed as A, and you'll notice that they formed two different groups. By my count each had 27 tanks. If you take a look at [2], you'll see that these tanks were well separated, with an earth wall between them. It is clear that when they were built precautions were taken to prevent the spread of (accidental of intentional) fire.
So, taking out the oil tanks was not as simple as dropping one bomb. You probably needed multiple passes. After the first successful pass, all others had to deal with the smoke, and more or less guess where their targets were. Of course, they would have to deal with the anti-air defenses. The second wave already took quite heavy losses, the third wave was guaranteed to incur much heavier ones.
Let's say in the best case scenario, the hypothetical third Japanese wave would have destroyed half of the 54 oil tanks. It would not have made a difference. Only a success rate of 90% would have, maybe.
In any case, that third wave was never planned. See [4] (written by one of hte co-authors of Shattered Sword) for convincing evidence that only 2 waves were planned, and Admiral Nagumo carried them as per the plan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#/media/...
[2] https://pearlharbor.org/pearl-harbors-third-strike-what-coul...
[3] https://medium.com/war-stories/the-one-key-thing-not-destroy...
[4] https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
However, they entered the war with better tactics and training, vastly better torpedoes, and superior fighter planes.