In these Japanese companies they'll be sorta monitoring you and fire you if you're caught not doing the mundane tasks they've assigned you. So they basically force you to quite or get fired.
Presumably it's the difference between firing with cause and firing without cause. There are many positions where performance is measured pretty ambiguously, so if you want to get rid of someone you couldn't demonstrate strong cause for doing so. Make them do pointless simple make-work, though, and you can easily find cause for firing if they don't do it.
Firing someone for performance isn't a thing in Japan.
The "pointless simple make-work" isn't to build up cause, it's to abuse and degrade them until they have enough of it and quit. The technical term for this is "constructive dismissal".
Your explanation is missing a nuance in the comment I was replying to -- namely, that people were being fired for not doing the pointless simple make-work. If you're going to fire them for that, why not just fire them in the first place and skip that entirely.
Not familiar with the culture or mindset, but I'm guessing it's simply because "you're fired because you intentionally didn't do your work" is easier to accept mentally / emotionally then "you're fired because you're just kinda stupid and slow."
Yeah, that's in the same vein as to what I was trying to get at. Being fired because you refuse to do stupid make-work is certainly less psychologically damaging than being fired because you were no good at your real work.
Not sure if it's typically the case in Japanese custom, but there are a number of scenarios where a person forfeits certain compensation by quitting that they would otherwise be entitled to if they're fired. So if the company can get rid of them by making them think it was their idea, the company saves on severance / recoups equity, etc.
