Kemari is a non competitive kickball game of Heian court origin, played by a circle of participants, traditionally between six and eight, whose collective aim is not to win against opponents but simply to keep a light deerskin ball aloft as long and as gracefully as possible using only the feet, never the hands, in a designated court traditionally marked by four trees, cherry, willow, pine and maple, at its corners, standing in for the boundary markers of an ordinary sports field.
The game entered Japan from China, where a related kickball tradition, cuju, had older roots, by around the seventh or eighth century, and was subsequently adopted and refined by the Heian aristocracy as a courtly pastime valuing elegance of form, coordinated group rhythm and correct etiquette over athletic contest in the ordinary sense, reflecting the wider Heian court culture's emphasis on refined aesthetic accomplishment across many domains of life, from poetry to dress to precisely this kind of stylised physical performance. Court nobility of both sexes and, over time, samurai and clergy took up the game, and its rules and refined technique were eventually codified and transmitted through specific noble families who held recognised authority over kemari instruction, a pattern of hereditary transmission of specialised cultural knowledge typical of many traditional Japanese arts.