The main reason that the Tone class went to the extreme of having all turrets forward has primarily to do with Japanese naval doctrine when they were designed and constructed. Doctrinally, the heavy cruisers were the primary scouting force for the fleet. Their float planes were by doctrine performing the equivalent of US carrier scout bombers (SBDs in another role).
The most famous example of this the scout that found Yorktown at Midway but had radio problems.
Anyway, the Japanese thinking was that by using float planes from cruisers they were not risking their carriers and were not interfering with flight operations from them or reducing strike size by having to launch scout aircraft.
The US got around the flight operations problem by building a awarthships catapult into the forward end of their early carrier hanger bays. This was supposed to allow launch of a scout bomber without interfering with the deck park or strike aircraft.
US heavy cruisers carried float aircraft for primarily gunfire control / spotting and as liasion aircraft not as scouts.
In the case of Tone leaving the rear of the ship clear of guns, etc., made recovery using either the ship's crane or Hein mats easier than trying to do this with the amidships arrangements on earlier classes. The Japanese were obviously willing to suffer the penalities of limited arcs of fire for their main battery in order to improve scouting operations on these ships.

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