Asanawa 麻縄
Japanese for rope twisted from asa fiber; in rope bondage the usual word for natural-fiber rope, most often jute, rather than for hemp alone.
Asanawa (麻縄) combines asa, plant fiber, and nawa, rope. Japanese dictionaries such as Daijisen define it as rope twisted from asa thread. Asa itself has a narrow sense, hemp (大麻), and a broad one covering strong plant fibers such as flax, ramie, jute and Manila hemp. Shibari Study uses the broad sense: its glossary glosses asanawa as natural-fiber rope as opposed to man-made fiber and points out that the word names no particular plant, which is one reason jute is treated as traditional; its rope guide adds that early translations wrongly equated asanawa with hemp. Andrea Ropes describes the asanawa used for bondage as natural-fiber rope, normally jute or hemp, about 7 to 8 meters long and 4 to 8 mm thick, with a knot at each end, which each nawashi treats in their own way.