It certainly would not have hurt.

The Japanese planned on losing 800,000 tons of shipping the first year of the war but lost over 1,123,000. They were woefully unprepared. This 300,000+ may not seem like much, but to a maritime nation dependent on shipping and that started out short (See TA Gardner's post above), to loose even more than planned and not have a way to significantly make up the loses, it was catastrophic. Even in 1944, when they built 624,290 tons of shipping, they lost 754,889 tons. Throughout the war, shipping losses were never less than new tonnage launched. They started out at a deficit of escorts (only 30 in Dec 1941), started too late to build them and then could not get what they needed built quickly enough.

Another major problem was that the Japanese did not initiate a proper convoy system until Mar 1944! It was not uncommon before that for empty ships to pass each other, headed for the port the other just left from, thus making a critical shortfall of bottoms even more so.

The two escort fleets created in 1942 and 43 to provide security consisted of only 24 destroyers, 5 coast defense frigates and five torpedo boats. At the outbreak of the war, they only had 30 total escort boats, none of them armed.

Even the 5 convoy escort carriers, all in need of repair, they allocated to escort were less than adequate. Four were sunk in less than a year. The Japanes never seemed to grasp the necessity of their merchant fleet, so I am left to wonder if additional shipping would actually have been of use for very long. They didn't seem to want to protect it very well.

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Best Regards,
JW