It largely depended on who had captured you, and ultimately who was in charge of you while you were imprisoned.

The Japanese Army was notoriously brutal and sadistic, across the board (even to its own soldiers).
The Japanese Navy was notoriously brutal, but also at times honorable in ways the IJA was not. Most stories of honorable, even kind treatment by the Japanese military are stories of capture by the navy.
Treatment within POW camps depended almost entirely on who was in command. Military-run camps were, essentially, torture and death camps. Camps run by Japanese civilians, especially those that had held important civilian posts during the pre-war period, could at times be tolerable.

Though rare, stories of honorable Japanese treatment of the enemy, even in the face of grave risk, do exist. Two examples on the top of my head: A Japanese fighter ace (Saburo Sakai) who disobeyed direct orders to shoot down a cargo plane over the Dutch East Indies when he noticed women and children looking at him through the windows. And in 1942 a Japanese destroyer captain exposed his ship to severe risk by taking on over 400 Royal Navy survivors of the sinking of the HMS Encounter. His own crew only numbered 200. It was uncommon for warships of any country engaged in the Pacific War to take on large numbers of enemy survivors of naval battles, for any reason.

So, yes, the Japanese on the whole treated captures soldiers, sailors, and airmen poorly. But, as is the nature of humanity, there were exceptions.