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みんなが彼の指差す方を見たんだ。

Why not 指差した or 指差していた ?

美しい孤独
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    This is about relative tense. Does this answer your question?: [How to appropriately pair tenses in subordinate and main clauses?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/25376/5010) 彼の指さした方を見たんだ is also grammatically correct and means almost the same thing, but 彼の指差す方を見たんだ means he was still pointing his finger when everyone started looking. – naruto Feb 08 '22 at 01:17
  • 彼の指さしていた方を見た would usually mean "They looked in the direction he *had been* pointing to", i.e., 彼 might not have been there when they looked. – naruto Feb 08 '22 at 02:14
  • Hmm, so would 指さす be similar to 指さしている ?Because after reading about relative tense, I thought 指さす meant: Everyone looked in the direction he “would point”, “was going to point” to, since it has not happened/ happened after they looked, rather than continuous tense. 指さした was simply “pointed”, and 指差していた was “were pointing”, but as you noted, it is more like the past perfect tense. I’m clearly having a hard time understanding the concept of tenses in Japanese. @naruto – 美しい孤独 Feb 08 '22 at 02:58
  • Yes, even in the present tense, 彼が指さす方を見る and 彼が指さしている方を見る are basically interchangeable. So 指さす in your sentence is in "relative present". In 彼が指さすまで待つ, 指さす is in "relative future". – naruto Feb 08 '22 at 03:03
  • Wouldn’t 指さしている be preferable then? Or is it because I just can’t help but feel the continuous present English tense in this particular sentence? I guess in Japanese it is not a good idea to be regarding the ている form as the continuous “ing” as a rule in some contexts, because if that was the case, you could not write 指さす right? I might as well be overcomplicating it… – 美しい孤独 Feb 08 '22 at 03:31

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