Been wracking my brain on what other place I could have read that in with sourcing I "trust", but the only ones I can think of are Gamble's Rabaul series, the Letourneau's Operation KE or less likely Shores' Burma books or Hata's IJAA Aces. More likely I'm just an idiot and am remembering wrong.

No judgement here! My contact got back to me and they could not think of any examples either. The most commonly cited issues for Japanese aero-engine maintenance was: manuals were harder to understand than US counterparts, lack of spare parts, manufacturing defects (later war in particular).