Don't make the Atakebune. It's costwise and performance-wise much worse than a normal cannon ship, especially when up against a Zhu Xi with potential Nest of Bees Imperial placement.

The mounted samurai are a decent answer into the spear and lancer composition. That deflective armor charge makes them trade okay against spearmen in low numbers when things are going well.

Man-at-arms (or early infantry) is always nice against Zhu Xi's Legacy because you decide where your opponent puts the Meditation Gardens, or rather you deny the outer parts of a Meditation Garden.

Open up with barracks, couple of dark age spearmen, and try to delay the pro scout a little bit, force the Zhu Xi player into an archery range and get some Zhuge Nu out on their side. Then afterwards, while they're busy pro scouting with the Zhuge Nu, Japan will just try and fast castle up behind that, and then we see some knights there at knight raids coming in.

One benefit of dark age rushing the Zhu Xi player is they can't move out to get the Meditation Garden in a better spot.