This is really funny and perhaps a fact of life! Just really curious what LNL's thought process was when assigning a zero LM to a Japanese colonel! He cannot be shaken and will take a bullet instead and be wounded, but yet has no positive leadership quality at all.
My two cents.
To me, the reason behind it could not only mean he is inept as a good leader but maybe the higher the rank the higher the chance that those guys see the war from a comfort position, usually giving orders to platoons or more far from the frontlines instead of single squads on the ground.
In small units tactics is required tactic instead of strategy, and maybe that colonel is good at making general strategies but don't know how to properly coordinate squads into the chaos of combat.
Or he is a douche and so full of himself that the men with him fail to get inspired...