[2] Shimenawa are believed to act as a ward against evil spirits, and are often set up at a ground-breaking ceremony before construction begins on a new building.

[citation needed] The prototype of shimenawa in Shinto is a rope of Amaterasu, Japan's "Heaven-shining great kami".

[4] According to "A popular dictionary of Shinto", Amaterasu hid in a cave called Amano-Iwato after an argument with her brother Susanoo.

Early shrines were not composed of classical buildings,[6] with rocks, plants and shimenawa instead marking their boundaries,[6] as part of the Shinto respect for nature.

[4] Zig-zag paper and colorful streamers called shide commonly decorate shimenawa.

[4] The festival's participants, who are all young men, wear nothing but a fundoshi in cold weather in order to show their strength and manliness.

[10] After the Cannabis Control Act of 1948, when the growing of hemp was banned,[10] straw began to be used instead as the raw material of shimenawa.

[11] During the process of production, the straw stems are harvested between 70 and 80 days of growth, as beyond this, the quality of the fibre decreases as the plant starts to produce its seeds.

[11] After the shimenawa straw is collected by machine, it is heated for more than 10 hours, to avoid the stems being dried by the sun.

[4] In ancient times, people offered cloth to the Shinto shrines, similarly to today's processions.

[4] Himorogi are the sacred spaces delimited by shimenawa,[4] which sometimes feature a cherry blossom tree surrounded by green plants appears, symbolising the seat of the gods.

[4] Kamidana are a reduced version of shimenawa used in daily life,[4] and are thought to control rice, salt, and water which could bring people good luck.

[4] Local residents in Japan's Kantō area put a shimenawa between green bamboo after a bolt of lightning appears on the planted rice field out of gratitude to Raijin.

[4] Similar to shimenawa, torii also have meaning in Shinto, representing a gate to the world, people, or any relationship.

[12] The name, taken from the quote "The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy" by Czech novelist Milan Kundera,[12] changed 'fuzzy' to 'frizzy' because of the twisted, shimenawa-inspired shape of his artwork.

[12] Avianto took the meaning of shimenawa to separate 'the sacred and the profane', or 'the ideal and the secular',[12] as inspiration in his work, using it to symbolise the boundary between 'the earth and heaven'.

[11] In the late 1990s, Japanese manufacturers visited Taiwan and found the high quality of straw as well as the relatively low cost of producing it.

[11] Other remaining factories chose to hand over the work to other Southeast Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, for a lower cost production.

[11] The craftsmen in Taiwan harvest the straw to make shimenawa, while Japanese manufacturers provide samples or finished products to the customers according to their orders.