This study examined the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones, by native Japanese speakers with a focus on the T3 (low-dipping) tone. Previous research has shown that Japanese learners tend to confuse T3 with other tones, notably T2, but it remains to be investigated whether the tones neighboring T3 affect the accuracy of T3 articulation. In this study, the effects of syllable count, tone position, and adjacent tones on the accuracy of T3 production were investigated. The results showed that the accuracy of T3 in both disyllabic and trisyllabic words is significantly affected by its position in a word, with a higher error rate in the final position. Moreover, the tones preceding T3 significantly affect the accuracy of T3 production, and T3 has a higher error rate when the preceding tone was T1. Among the tonal combinations studied, T1T3 and T4T1T3 were found to be particularly challenging for Japanese learners. Acoustic analysis of F0 showed that Japanese speakers had a lower F0 at the beginning of T3 and a narrower F0 range than native Mandarin speakers. Additionally, the lowest F0 for the Japanese speakers occurred earlier in the syllable and was higher than that of the native Mandarin speakers.