Page 34 - Makino,Tsutusi.DictionaryOfIntermediateJGrammar

SPECIAL TOPICS IN INTERMEDIATE JAPANESE GRAMMAR

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([I] It is ten days before the month of August, but insects are already
crying. [2] The sound of night dew dropping from a leave to another
is audible. . [3] All of a sudden Shingo heard the sound of the mountain.
[4] There is no wind. [5] The moon is almost a full moon and bright,
yet the moist night air blurs the outline of the tree tops of the small
mountain. [6] But the trees are not moving in the wind. [7] At the so-
called inner part of the valley of Kamakura, some nights Shingo is able
to hear the sound of waves, so he suspected that it was the sound of the
sea, but it turned out to be the sound of the mountain. [8] It is like the
distant sound of the wind, but it had deep power like that of the earth
rumbling. [9] He feels as if it were in his head, so he thought it was his
ears ringing and he shook his head. [lo] The sound stopped. [ll]
After the sound stopped Shingo was overtaken by fear for the first
time. [12] A chill ran through his spine as if the hour of his death had
been proclaimed. [13] Shingo had tried to figure out objectively if it
was the sound of the wind or the sound of waves or ringing in his ears,
and he thought it was possible that there wasn't any sound. [14] But
there was no doubt that he had heard the sound of the mountain.)

Logically speaking, the author could have written every sentence in the past
tense. Nevertheless, the author sometimes used the past tense and sometimes
the nonpast tense. In this passage, 5 sentences (i.e., Sentences 1,2,4,5,6) out
of 14 sentences are in the nonpast tense shown by the double underline. (In the
translation the original nonpast predicate is translated using the nonpast tense
and italicized.) In other words, a switch from the past tense to the nonpast has 1
occurred in those 5 sentences.
An examination of the 5 sentences in the nonpast tense reveals that these
sentences describe a circumstance that surrounds Shingo, the main character of