One reviewer in the committee rejected my Ph.D. defense but he didn't attend

Ask for a different 3rd reviewer.

This person clearly does not respect the doctoral process and does not give you a fair chance to gain your PhD. He should be removed from the committee and replaced by someone else who does. You still can work in his comments as far as possible, as content-wise, they are relevant, but they should not be entrusted with judgement concerning your future academic (or otherwise) career.

Too new to comment, so following up on CaptainEmacs answer and whether it is "too late" to change reviewers.

I have a friend (albeit in the US) who had one reviewer out of three, not approve. And similarly, the reviewer was slow to give details, and asked for unreasonable amounts of not just changes but follow on work to be done before he would accept. His professor and this reviewer could not see eye to eye, and my friend was running out of time before he needed to leave to start a job he accepted. He basically had to choose to abandon all his work or take this job.

It was resolved in the following way: his professor decided to ask if the reviewer would mind letting someone else take his spot on the comittee, and the reviewer agreed he would give up his spot on the committee to someone else if the department found someone who would take his spot. Note, this was not required (I think with department approval, the committee can be changed at any point), but getting approval made anything easier "politics-wise", and also made it clear that it really was just that this reviewer did not want his name on it. In his case, it seemed the reviewer was an outsider to the field and did not understand how much additional research would be required to follow up on his questions (after all, interesting research always brings up follow-up questions; I guess there was a cross-field disagreement of where it is acceptable to draw that line).

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In summary: Even in a case where all reviewers showed up, if the expectations are far enough out of line of the others, it is reasonable to change the committee.

I worked for four years in Japan in a research setting close to academia (not a university). In my experience hiring and evaluating people in Japan is mainly based on the relationship of the boss/GL/supervisors to each other. What you call "they have respect for other people" is that in a normal setting in a Japanese hierarchy your would not do things which reflect badly on your superiors or people where you are either lower in the hierarchy (have to use honorific forms to address them) or to whom you owe a favour. My considerations may reflect the Japanese mentality as far as I understand it. It boils down to a few essential questions:

• are you a foreigner? If yes, nobody owes you a favour
• is the reviewer also foreign? If yes, he doesn't owe anybody (in the Japanese sense).
• if he is not: how is his relationship to your supervisor.

My uneducated guesses:

• If you are foreigner and all others are Japanese: Your supervising professor doesn't have a relationship to the reviewer which requires the reviewer to address him in honorific form -> your direct supervisor misestimated one or more of the following
  1. The quality of your common work
  2. the interest of the reviewer in it
  3. Inter-institute politics
  4. The support of the supervising professor/dean
  5. The relationship between the supervising professor/dean and the reviewer
• If additionally you are Japanese potentially additionally:
  6. The relative power/fame of the institution you did your master with
  7. Your master thesis supervisors relationship to the reviewer
• If the reviewer is a foreigner, it takes some things off the table, since he will not be in the Japanese hierarchy. but some things will be added.

I have seen it happening before that due to communication issues the expected level and quality of work was not aligned between foreign collaborators/reviewers, i have been part of such constellations when it came to publications, where some people expected my formal collaborator "OK" but basically (even in a suitable diplomatic way) called out the bullshit. Some were as surprised as you (even if it was not a PHD thesis), since the GL obviously did not not communicate well before.

So my most likely estimation is that you direct supervisor did not communicate enough. I suggest that (if you are a foreigner) discuss the situation mainly with the dean and push either for a formal non-acceptance of your university of the reviewers comments (your dean will be experienced in finding convincing excuses) and another reviewer. If the reviewer is foreign and his comments are good, you could also try to shift the date and try to have a research visit at your reviewers institution.