Origins - Kemari

Kemari is a highly ritualised game indigenous to Japan that has been played for over a millennium. It is one of just two ancient ball games, along with cuju from China, that we know were played with the feet. The game of kemari enjoyed a high social status, the legacy of which is a historical record that has been passed down through the centuries. It is the only ancient ball game for which we have accurate details as to its exact nature.

Formal kemari meets were known as marikai. They had three stages. Firstly, the warm-up – players kicked the ball among themselves and into the trees to see how it fell. In the second stage, players demonstrated their individual skill to the spectators. In the final stage, as evening approached, they moved away from the trees and closer to the centre of the court. This stage was called kazumari, where teamwork was emphasised over individual skill and the number of kicks was counted.

The uniform plays a significant role in kemari rituals and comes with four main elements. The hat is known as an eboshi, while the arrowroot fibre trousers are called mari-hakama, which lead to shoes known as kamo-kutsu. All of this is pulled together by the most elaborate feature of the outfit – the mari-suikan, a type of kimono with long sleeves that is crafted from a rough, unknitted silk that forces the players to stand up straight.

Once the players are dressed, the next part of the ritual can begin. The ball is blessed at a shrine and taken to the garden known as the mariniwa, where the court is. A ceremony called tokimari is held where a man called the edayaku prays for prosperity and world peace. The game can then begin!

Every sport does it today, but kemari is the first ball game that we know of in which scoring was a definitive feature. It could, of course, be played for fun, but there was an official designated to keep score in competitions. Unlike the whistle of today’s referees, however, he would count silently until 50 and then announce every tenth kick, with the option of adding a bonus ten when players executed a particularly skilful kick. Generally, meets set a number at which play should be stopped, with one text mentioning limits of 120, 300, 360, 700 and 1,000 – all numbers with a root in astrology.

Teamwork is absolutely essential in kemari, but meets were also arranged that focused on competition between players. In this case, two teams of eight players were formed. Each team performed a preset number of trials and the team with the most kicks in a single trial was declared the winner.

As with the modern game of football, certain kemari players achieved widespread fame – one of whom was the 12th-century court noble Fujiwara no Narimichi. Although an accomplished flute player, poet, and horse rider, he was best known for his kemari skills. He claimed to have played the game for a total of 7,000 days, 2,000 of which were consecutive!

Legend has it that Narimichi walked back and forth across the rail of the veranda outside the main hall of the Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto, while kicking a kemari ball in the air – a task in which a single misstep would have resulted in a 13-metre fall to the ground!

Kemari was played almost exclusively by men. In The Confessions of Lady Nijō, compiled in 1307, the author writes about court women being compelled to play kemari for the rarity of the spectacle, to their “acute embarrassment”. And it seems the women at court did not appreciate watching the game either: the female authors of both Makura no Sōshi (The Pillow Book) and Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) describe the game as an “unpleasant spectacle” and “less than genteel” respectively.

While a legendary sumo match is said to have won the country of Japan for the sun goddess Amaterasu, there is no impressive myth regarding the origins of kemari. The Nihongi first mentions it as a game renowned for the participants’ good manners and fair play, as told through the story of Crown Prince Naka no Ōe and the courtier Nakatomi no Kamatari.

Kemari and poetry were seen as compatible, and perhaps even comparable, art forms. People gathered formally in groups to compose, share and appreciate verses of poetry together, much as they congregated under trees to watch a game of kemari. When enjoyed among the nobility, events featuring either pastime relied on distinctive procedures and protocols.

The popularity of kemari at court led to the formalisation and refinement of the game, as all activities at the Imperial Palace had to be conducted with proper manners, procedures and deference. Kemari evolved from a pastime into a finely tuned art, which carried an air of elite culture and sophistication.

The samurai came to prominence following the war between the southern and northern courts. But why, as famous and feared warriors, were they interested in learning kemari? The answer lay in their increased dealings with the aristocrats. As the samurai increased their contacts with the aristocrats, they had to familiarise themselves with the cultures of Kyoto – the then capital of Japan – and maintain a good relationship with the imperial court.

This notion of using sport to ascend to or communicate with higher ranks – as the samurai did by playing kemari – is commonplace in modern-day sport. Participation in or knowledge of sports such as horse racing, cricket, golf or tennis, as well as an interest in art and music, is often a prerequisite, or at least helpful, to successfully occupy a certain standing within society.

The Asukai were the foremost among the aristocratic families controlling kemari. They sent representatives to Kamakura to convey the proper techniques and procedures to the shogunate, even awarding certificates to those high-ranking samurai who were deemed worthy of socialising with the aristocrats of the imperial court at a kemari event. By the mid-17th century, this control had practically become a monopoly, and the Asukai were acknowledged as the iemoto or “founding family” of kemari. As the popularity of kemari spread to towns and villages around Japan, the Asukai appointed local representatives to maintain the integrity of the sport and ensure that their influence over the game did not waver. Fees were paid to participate and players obtained licences to convey a certain level of aptitude, not dissimilar to belts or dans in modern martial arts, and this money provided an important source of income.

Much of Kyoto was destroyed during the Ōnin War and many residents fled to other parts of the country, taking with them aspects of their culture, including kemari. Throughout the turbulent 16th century, known as the Age of Warring States, successive heads of the Asukai family travelled around the country to ensure that standards were maintained wherever the game was played.

The 17th century saw the start of an extended era of peace and stability in Japan known as the Edo period. It was named after the new capital of the shogunate in what is present-day Tokyo. It was an ideal environment for kemari to spread geographically, but also across the social classes. Through local representatives in towns and villages across the country, the Asukai extended their influence among classes of people previously excluded from kemari. A wealthier class of commoner, such as urban merchants, rural landlords and priests, started to enjoy the game for the first time, alongside other elegant art forms, such as the tea ceremony and poetry. Competitors tried to challenge the authority of the Asukai, but were unsuccessful. In 1647, a commoner was exiled to a distant island for teaching an unauthorised version of kemari – in other words, for playing kemari without a licence. The Asukai thus remained at the head of a unified game of kemari until the end of the Edo period in 1868.

Sasaki Sukezaemon was a local official of the commoner class who lived in Mochigase, one of many towns situated along the Inaba Kaidō – the road linking the cities of Tottori and Himeji. He kept a journal, in which he recorded the many times when he played kemari.

Family records contain a certificate issued by a representative of the Asukai house in 1771, designating him as a disciple and specifying the attire he was authorised to wear when playing. This indicated his social status and his place in the hierarchy of the Asukai kemari world. The games were fairly diverse: he played kemari with other locals from Mochigase, but also with samurai from Tottori and visitors from Harima province, at the other end of the Inaba Kaidō.

Social class had a marked effect on the techniques that players used in their games. Those of lower status – servants, clerks and guards at the court, for example – did mainly physical jobs, which required the kind of dexterity and quickness that were also useful in kemari. Achieving a high number of kicks was the most important thing for them. The ball had to be kept from touching the ground at all costs. This led to them developing dynamic, acrobatic moves.

For the aristocratic players, however, achieving a high count was not necessarily the main goal. Maintaining one’s dignity and one’s poise – hin in Japanese – was more important. Bending the knee when kicking the ball was frowned upon and considered undignified.

Another feature that distinguished kemari between the different social groups was the degree of attention paid to and sensitivity towards the other players. This was especially evident when receiving a kicked ball. In the common game, players were more aggressive in pursuing flying balls. The courtiers, in contrast, were more reserved.

The widespread popularity that kemari enjoyed during the Edo period did not survive the turbulent transition to modernity that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The dramatically changed role of the nobility after the restoration was a predominant factor. They were reorganised into a newly formed peerage known as the Kazoku, which stripped them of their hereditary power and occupations. And so, to put it simply, the social and economic bedrock on which kemari had been founded and prospered was no more.

Given that the Asukai had already eliminated all of their competitors, when it came to enforcing the rules of the game, there was no one left to pick up the ball. The large-scale adoption of Western civilisation and sports, together with the comparatively high costs associated with kemari, saw it reduced to a level of subsistence. With no one paying the fees, kemari was no longer a viable source of income – a key factor in the survival of traditional Japanese sports. However, sumo and the martial arts were quick to adapt their models to the modern world, with the former becoming a spectator sport and the latter remarketing itself as a form of physical education and fitness.

Sumo’s survival was largely down to establishing itself as a spectator sport in the 17th century. With the help of the mass media, sumo has managed to thrive and survive through its fan base of paying spectators.

Martial arts forged a different path. The model was first devised by the educator Kanō Jigorō, when he developed judo as a form of physical exercise that could be incorporated into the education system. The many local training centres, known as dojos, also played a crucial part, not only in popularising judo, but also in serving as a source of income for instructors who could charge their students for their tuition.

Had it not been for the Kemari Preservation Association, formed in Kyoto in 1903 by a small group of aristocrats, the game may have disappeared forever. Unlike sumo, kemari was not established as a spectator sport and although it avoided the association with militarism that had stained other sports, it took a small group of enthusiasts to ensure its survival.

Still celebrated and played today, kemari is considered a part of the cultural heritage of Japan. As a ball game in which only feet are used, it can also safely stake its claim among the antecedents of all the modern football codes, but in particular association football. Although it failed to make the transition from ancient to modern sport, kemari was remarkable for the fact that in its heyday, it boasted many of the seven criteria that historian Allen Guttmann states are necessary for a sport to call itself modern. It was secular and not based on religious beliefs or superstitions; it had a bureaucracy to make rules; it was rational and scientific; and it was obsessed with record-keeping and celebrating those records. Kemari may have missed out on a place in the line-up of modern sports, but in the ball tricks performed by the likes of Diego Maradona and in new sports such as freestyle football, its spirit and legacy live on.

<div id="" class="ce_text ce_text" data-frontend-helper="{"> <div class="inside"> <div class="text"> <h2 data-gtm-vis-first-on-screen-1381128="" data-gtm-vis-recent-on-screen-1381128="" data-gtm-vis-total-visible-time-1381128="" data-gtm-vis-has-fired-1381128="">CARE FOR MORE?</h2> Travel the world and discover the fascinating pre-histories of football in ancient Greece and Rome, Meso-America and China by clickling on the button below. </div> </div> </div>