Meaning of a long dash "――", and use of past tense in the present


I have this following sentence:

> 横線――ＨＰバーの名で呼ばれる青いそれは、俺の生命の残量を可視化したものだ。

There are a few questions I came up with about this sentence:

  1. The first part of the sentence is: `横線――ＨＰバーの名で呼ばれる青いそれ`, my question is how can this sentence be parsed? How does the long `――` change the meaning/parsing of the sentence? 
  2. At the end of the sentence, it is written: `可視化したもの`. Why is `可視化した` used in past form, while according to the context I'd expect a present-form? Is this perhaps a grammar subject I just don't know yet?

Any help is appreciated!




1.

> [[ＨＰバーの名]で呼ばれる] [青いそれ]

I can't really say for sure about "――" without more context. My guess is that
横線 is being pulled out to make it clear that it's the term being explained
(maybe it's part of a list?). The technical terms in my translation might be
off, but this should give you the feel:

> The Horizontal Line -- that blue thing which goes by the name of ....

You might have been thrown off by 青いそれ, literally "blue that". In English,
demonstrative pronouns cannot be modified by adjectives, but that is not the
case in Japanese.

2.

Basically it says that this is "the result of" visualizing your remaining
life. Since it is the result of that process, it's already complete, therefore
した.

A subtle point is that もの is not the subject of the relative clause. I.e. the
literal translation of 俺の生命の残量を可視化したもの is _not_ "The thing that visualizes my
remaining life" (although that might be the most idiomatic English
expression), rather "(The thing which is) the result of having visualized my
remaining life". Note that Japanese is very flexible about the role of the
modified noun in the relative clause. Less so in English, which is why the
literal translation I give above does not involve a relative clause at all.

The technical way to explain した would be say that this is not a past tense,
but a **perfective aspect**. The use of different verb forms for tense-aspect
in Japanese is quite subtle, and the use differs between matrix sentences and
subordinate/relative clauses. Let me know if you want to know more about this,
it might be worth a separate question.




1.

> [[ＨＰバーの名]で呼ばれる] [青いそれ]

I can't really say for sure about "――" without more context. My guess is that
横線 is being pulled out to make it clear that it's the term being explained
(maybe it's part of a list?). The technical terms in my translation might be
off, but this should give you the feel:

> The Horizontal Line -- that blue thing which goes by the name of ....

You might have been thrown off by 青いそれ, literally "blue that". In English,
demonstrative pronouns cannot be modified by adjectives, but that is not the
case in Japanese.

2.

Basically it says that this is "the result of" visualizing your remaining
life. Since it is the result of that process, it's already complete, therefore
した.

A subtle point is that もの is not the subject of the relative clause. I.e. the
literal translation of 俺の生命の残量を可視化したもの is _not_ "The thing that visualizes my
remaining life" (although that might be the most idiomatic English
expression), rather "(The thing which is) the result of having visualized my
remaining life". Note that Japanese is very flexible about the role of the
modified noun in the relative clause. Less so in English, which is why the
literal translation I give above does not involve a relative clause at all.

The technical way to explain した would be say that this is not a past tense,
but a **perfective aspect**. The use of different verb forms for tense-aspect
in Japanese is quite subtle, and the use differs between matrix sentences and
subordinate/relative clauses. Let me know if you want to know more about this,
it might be worth a separate question.

