In the later 1930s the Japanese are probably even less prepared to fight the USA not just from a military standpoint but from an economic one just as importantly. As the USA ramped up economic sanctions the Japanese did their best to stockpile oil, raw materials and so forth. If war starts after the Panay Incident or somewhat later these stockpiles either don't exist or are quite small. Even if the UK, France, and the Netherlands don't join in I doubt very much that they will sell the Japanese oil, tin, rubber, rice, etc from SEA and get much ill will from the USA. If any of this is sold, especially rice, I expect it would be cash only in foreign currency/hard currency which is in very short supply in Japan.
In 1941 when the full oil embargo hit Japan had 12+ months of oil reserves for military and industrial use. During WWII Japan was able to use oil from SEA to keep the wheels turning after a fashion until later in the war when the Allies cut off transportation fro SEA to Japan. In the scenario of a US-Japan war in the latter third of the 1930s, even assuming Japan had the same stockpile of petroleum as OTL 12/41, within 18 months Japanese industry would be halted and the IJN and IJA have dry fuel tanks and that is the most optimistic scenario. A potential wild card is the USSR selling petroleum to Japan, for cold hard cash of course, but even then the ability of the USSR to transport large quantities of oil to Japan via the trans-Siberian RR is limited. Furthermore certain products, such as aviation gasoline, were in short supply in the USSR and Japan's ability to refine it was limited starting with crude. There is no way Japanese tankers could go from Japan to the Crimea to take on crude without being sunk, and the Soviet tanker fleet was limited and Stalin would not risk it taking oil to Japan on "neutral" ships.
Japan getting in to a war with the USA was a bad move period. In this scenario, where the USA can devote 100% of its effort to the Pacific, where the UK, France, Netherlands can be friendly neutrals or even more, and as in the previous paragraph Japan is cut off from all the raw materials its military and society in general absolutely need, it is even worse.