しめなわ

Japanese

For pronunciation and definitions of しめなわ – see the following entry.

【標縄】 [noun] Lengths of laid rice straw rope used for ritual purification in Shinto shrines. They can vary in diameter from a few centimetres to several metres, and are often seen festooned with shide. A space bound by shimenawa often indicates a sacred or pure space, such as that of a Shinto shrine.

(This term, しめなわ (shimenawa), is the hiragana spelling of the above term.)