T-Man, you're basically correct; that was the Japanese strategy, and it was a stupid one based entirely on their misreading of American will. Their 'Limited War' strategy crashed headfirst into a 'Total War' strategy on our side. They had convinced themselves we were weak, decadent pushovers, and totally underestimated the consequences of getting us solidly pissed off.
Both Gemany and Japan seem to have completely blanked on the problems of taking on powers with many times their population and truly overwhelming industrial capacities. England alone, not even counting the Commonwealth, nearly matched German industry and substantially exceeded Japan's. The Japanese blindness to this fact of life is particularly surprising after the spanking the Soviets administered to the Japanese at Khalkin Gol in 1937, where a multi-division mechanized force under Zhukov pretty much slaughtered a couple of Japanses corps. All they seem to have taken away from that was 'Don't screw with the Russkiis,' without apparently causing them to reflect at all on why they got spanked so hard. Fortunately for us, they proved to be not real good at learning from bad experience during the war.
The screwy thing about the Japanese strategic vision (Which was formulated by the Army, not the Navy) was that they viewed the 'Real' war to be in China to almost the bitter end, the reason they went to war with the Western powers was for the limited strategic aim of getting the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies so they could continue to prosecute the war in China after we cut off our oil to them. We thought cutting off the oil would force them to stop the war in China, but they regarded it as a national imperative to continue that war at all costs, which we misread; for their part, they decided they needed the oil, would seize Dutch holdings to get it, and that attacking the Dutch would therefore involve war with the US and UK, IMHO I'm not sure we or the Brits would have actually gone to war with them over Dutch colonial territory in 1941. War with Japan was an 'Unintended consequences' situation and a complete misread of strategic interests, capabilities, and positions on both sides.
But as far as 'Luck' goes, luck is good and makes winning come quicker and at a lower cost, but the Japanese weren't going to actually win it no matter what happened after December 7th. They could have sunk the entire Seventh Fleet including the three (IIRC) fleet carriers that operated out of Pearl that year, none of which happened to be home on December 7th, and it wouldn't have changed the ultimate outcome. Every major ship sunk at Pearl Harbor was refloated except Arizona; Oklahoma was judged to be too damaged to get back in operation in Hawaii, and was lost at sea while being towed back to California. All the rest of them were repaired, modernized, and delivered immense punishment to the Japanese for the rest of the war. Of course there was already a series of US emergency naval building programs dating from the late 30s, when the Washington Treaty expired, bearing fruit in the US. Those program eventually lead to new construction of three classes of modern battleships, the Essex class carriers, the Independence class light carriers, light and heavy cruisers, and literally hordes of destroyers, 'Jeep carriers,' and long-range subs of the Tench/Balao/Gato class. None of the major units had yet been finished to the point of joining the fleet at Pearl on December 7th 1941, but they were in the pipeline in crushing force.