Nawa 縄
The everyday Japanese word for rope or cord, and the root of many kinbaku terms such as nawashi, semenawa and nawajiri.
Nawa simply means rope or cord. Jisho also lists a second sense, a policeman’s rope. In Sino-Japanese compounds the same character is read jō, as in hojōjutsu, the martial art of restraint (Shibari Study). In kinbaku vocabulary the word is everywhere: nawashi for a rope artist, semenawa for torment rope, kazarinawa for decorative rope and nawajiri for the working end. Natural-fiber rope, in Japan most often jute, is called asanawa; its first element, asa, covers several bast fibers, among them jute, hemp and linen (Wikipedia, Shibari Study).