Kaomoji: Japanese Emoticons

Kaomoji (顔文字) is a popular Japanese emoticon style made up of

Japanese characters and grammar punctuations, and are used to express
emotion in texting and cyber communication. The word kaomoji is also
synonymous to be referred to as Japanese emoticons. This concept is
formed by the combination of two words in Kanji, “kao” (顔 – “face”) and
“moji” (文字 – “character”).

Japanese are very emotional and creative nation. Therefore, in Japan

emoticons are popular as nowhere in the world.

Japanese believe that eyes are the mirror of a human soul. Therefore,
unlike Western emoticons where most attention is paid to mouth,
in Japanese emoticons the most important part are eyes. In
addition, kaomoji are so popular because you don’t have to read them
sideways.

Many Japanese are good at drawing because Japanese is the language of

drawings. Anime and manga are vivid examples of how closely the authors
manage to convey a variety of emotions just by a set of a few simple lines.

In the beginning of internet and instant messaging – lack of face-to-face

talk resulted in mistakenly taking parodies and humorous jokes the wrong
way. Kaomoji is a result of manga and anime fans who wanted to correct
those mistakes, avoid awkward writing situations, and express words more
creatively.

Japanese emoticons are extremely diverse. Some of Internet sources

state the number of 10000 but, in fact, there are much more of them.
Such diversity may be explained by at least two factors:

 unlike Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, which are usually written in

single-byte character sets, Japanese writing requires a minimum of
double-byte sets with a wider scope of characters;
  kaomoji can express not only individual emotions, but also complex
actions, objects, and even whole stories.

Japanese emoticons are divided into categories based on emotional

component of a form, action or object. These emoticons can also use some
special characters for additional connotation.

On this website you can find an interesting collection of kawaii

(cute) Japanese emoji compiled from various (mostly Japanese) internet
sources. Since it is impossible to find and display all of them, we selected
the most interesting and cute ones, as well as added our own. In addition,
we also developed an application for Android.

So! Feel free to use these Japanese emoticons. Mix and match the
elements of different kaomoji and create your own creative options!

Kaomoji Categories

Positive Emotions Negative Emotions Neutral E

 Joy  Dissatisfaction  In
 Love  Anger  C
 Embarrassment  Sadness  D
 Sympathy  Pain  Su
 Fear

Various Actions Animals Other Typ

 Greeting  Cat  Fr
 Hugging  Bear  En
 Winking  Dog  W
 Apologizing  Rabbit  M
 Nosebleeding  Pig  Fo
 Hiding  Bird  M
 Writing  Fish  G
 Running  Spider  Fa
 Sleeping  Sp