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In Yorushika's song "Hitchcock"'s lyrics appears the sentence:

> ニーチェもフロイトもこの穴の埋め方は書かないんだ

Which is translated as "Neither Nietche nor Freud wrote about how to fill this
hole" by some dude on youtube, which logically makes sense, but doesn't based
on my understanding of the Nai form. Were I to be shown this phrase out of
context, I would in fact interpret it as in "they don't/will not write about",
whereas referring to their lack of writing I would use "書いていない" instead. Could
somebody explain to me what the logic (granted there is one) behind this
wording choice is?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-18T06:14:50.787
94173
2022-04-19T04:49:52.653
2022-04-18T06:48:40.853
42110
42110
question
grammar song-lyrics negation ambiguity past
Usage of 「書かない」referring to famous authors
It may be easiest to think of this as an example of [_historical
present_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_present). In short, 書かないんだ
can sound more vivid and dramatic than 書かなかったんだ or 書いていないんだ.

  * [Sentence in the present tense when the text is in the past tense?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/61679/5010)
  * [Why does this Light Novel title get translated to the past tense?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/66455/5010)
  * [Negative present endings translated as past tense](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/53760/5010)

As far as basic grammar goes, 書かない is definitely in present tense. But since
historical present is much more common in Japanese, and since we all know ニーチェ
and フロイト are people in the past, it's fine to ignore the original tense and
use the past form to translate this line naturally.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-18T11:08:24.717
94174
2022-04-19T04:49:52.653
2022-04-19T04:49:52.653
5010
5010
94173
answer