Java is the worse language to deal with in Kubernetes. You might want to look into Quarkus. I’m of the opinion that ditching Java for Go is better if possible.
Also regarding Quarkus, that's java stuff. I don't use it, but I know people do use it for shortcomings of Java in k8s. Perhaps GraalVM is the thing that makes it worth-while, idk.
There's also a distroless Java container from Google that could be of value.