Kaomoji (顔文字): Japanese Emoticons, With a List to Copy and Paste

Kaomoji (顔文字): Japanese Emoticons

Kaomoji are Japanese emoticons: faces built from letters, punctuation and symbols, such as (^_^). The word is 顔文字 (かおもじ, kaomoji, “emoticon”), and it joins 顔 (かお, kao, “face”) and 文字 (もじ, moji, “letter (of an alphabet)”), so it literally means "face characters".

Unlike Western emoticons such as :), which you tilt your head to read, kaomoji are meant to be read upright, and the eyes do most of the work. Below you will find a list to copy and paste, grouped by feeling, then how to read them, where they came from and how to type them.

Jump to: happy, love, sad, angry, surprised and blushing, shrug, wink and tease, sleepy, animals, greetings, thanks and hugs, how to read them, how to type them.

Each kaomoji sits in its own cell, so you can select it and copy it. The meanings are the common readings, not rules: nobody owns these faces, and people mix and change them all the time.

Happy kaomoji

Happy faces are the ones you will use most. The rule is simple: eyes shaped like ^ for a smile, and the more squeezed the eyes, the harder the laugh. The difference between (＾▽＾) and (≧▽≦) is how funny the joke was.

Love and cute kaomoji

For love and cute faces, use hearts, flowers and small round cheeks. Big eyes and a tiny mouth are the rule: ◕‿◕ looks cuter than ・_・. This is the look Japanese calls 可愛い (かわいい, kawaii, “cute”), and it is the style of most kawaii kaomoji.

If you want to say "I love you" with words instead of a face, read I Love You in Japanese, which covers how people really say 愛してる and 好き.

Sad and crying kaomoji

Sad faces use T or ; for tears and a flat or wobbly mouth. They are some of the easiest to read, because the tears are so plain.

The (´・ω・｀) face is a good one to know. It is the mild one: not a flood of tears, just "a little down".

Angry and annoyed kaomoji

Angry kaomoji use a clenched mouth, often the kanji 皿, and add marks such as ╬ or # to the face. Annoyed ones are cooler: a side-glance, a flat mouth.

The table flip is popular all over the internet, and English Wikipedia calls it a viral meme. Use it with friends, not in a formal message.

Surprised, nervous and blushing kaomoji

Wide eyes and a round mouth mean surprise. A drop of sweat means nerves or an awkward moment. Slashes across the cheeks mean a blush, and the more slashes, the more flustered the face.

The sweat drop echoes manga, where a drop of sweat on a character's face shows worry or panic. The blush is the same idea: a feeling drawn as a mark on the cheeks. A related word is 照れる (てれる, tereru, “to be shy”), the bashful, blushing kind of embarrassment.

Shrug kaomoji

The shrug, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, is on every big kaomoji list, and it means "I don't know". The face in the middle is the katakana ツ, which happens to look like a smile. Japanese Wikipedia has a shrug of its own, a face with raised shoulders that it labels with words for exasperation and "oh dear".

Wink, tease and straight-faced kaomoji

Some faces are about attitude, not feeling: a wink, a smirk, a deadpan stare.

The wink in particular is one that younger Japanese users see as dated. More on that below.

Sleepy and tired kaomoji

Closed eyes and a drifting zzz mean sleep. A flat, flopped body means you are worn out.

Animal kaomoji: cat, bear and squid

Animal faces show how far the form can stretch: the Japanese Wikipedia lists a bear and a squid among its examples.

The cat is 猫 (ねこ, neko, “cat (esp. the domestic cat, Felis catus)”), and the bear is 熊 (くま, kuma, “bear (any mammal of family Ursidae)”). The squid mixes kana (くコ) with a colon and the character 彡.

Greeting, thanks, bowing and hug kaomoji

Some kaomoji do something instead of showing a feeling. They draw the arms: づ and つ reach out for a hug, and ノ waves.

The bow, m(_ _)m, is the most Japanese of these. Japanese Wikipedia labels it as a prostration for a request, a kneeling bow of apology, and a plea. Use it for "please" and "sorry", not for a plain thank-you.

How to read a kaomoji: eyes, mouth and cheeks

Once you can read the parts, you can read almost any kaomoji, including ones you have never seen. A face usually has an outline (often brackets), a pair of eyes, a mouth, and some decoration.

The eyes

The eyes carry the feeling. Here are the common ones:

The mouth

The mouth is small in most kaomoji, and it shifts the meaning:

Two of these are borrowed from kanji: 皿 (さら, sara, “plate”) and 口 (くち, kuchi, “mouth”). The ω is the Greek letter omega.

Cheeks and extras

• Cheeks. Small marks beside the eyes, such as ｡ or ๑, read as round cheeks and make a face cuter. Slashes such as /// mean a blush or embarrassment.
• Sweat. A semicolon after the face, as in (^_^;), is a drop of sweat: nerves or an awkward moment.
• Hearts and sparkles. ♡ adds love and ☆ adds sparkle.
• Flowers. A flower such as ✿ in the corner is often a hair clip, and adds sweetness.
• Arms. ノ is a waving hand, as in (ノ´▽｀)ノ.

Build your own

Because the parts are interchangeable, you can build a face the way a Japanese user would. Start with the plainest smile, (^_^). Open the mouth and the smile gets bigger, (＾▽＾). Squeeze the eyes shut and it becomes a laugh, (≧▽≦). Add sparkles and raised hands, ☆*o(≧▽≦)o*☆, and it is a cheer.

The same goes for other feelings. Swap the happy eyes for T T and the face cries. Add a semicolon and it sweats.

Why kaomoji are read upright (and why the eyes matter)

A Western emoticon such as :) is sideways: you tilt your head left to see the eyes, nose and mouth. A kaomoji faces you. That is the main difference, and it explains a second one: in a kaomoji the weight sits in the eyes, while in a Western emoticon it sits in the mouth.

This is not only a matter of style. In a study published in 2007, Masaki Yuki, William Maddux and Takahiko Masuda compared how Japanese and American people read emotion in faces, both in drawings and in real faces with the eyes and mouth changed separately. Japanese participants gave more weight to the eyes. American participants gave more weight to the mouth. The authors tied this to the way the two groups write emoticons: American ones change the mouth (:) and :(), and Japanese ones change the eyes ((^_^) and (;_;)).

That finding comes from one study, and it does not hold for every person. But it fits what you see in the lists above. To change a happy kaomoji into a sad one, you mostly change the eyes.

Japanese Wikipedia also notes that since the late 2000s the Japanese style has become common in the English-speaking world too, for two reasons it gives: it is expressive, and you can read it without tilting your head. It sorts emoticons into Japanese, Western and Chinese types. The Chinese type, it says, has some faces like the Japanese, some like the Western, and some of its own, such as 囧, a slumped, disappointed look.

Kaomoji vs emoji: 顔文字 and 絵文字

Emoji and kaomoji are both Japanese words, and they are easy to mix up. They are different things.

• A kaomoji is a face made of letters and symbols, typed like text.
• An 絵文字 (えもじ, emoji, “emoji”) is a single small picture, treated as one character.

The first part of 絵文字 is 絵 (え, e, “picture”), so it means "picture character". The English word "emoji" comes from it. Despite the look of the word, it has nothing to do with "emotion" or "emoticon": the likeness is a coincidence.

Emoji came later than kaomoji, at least in the form we know. Shigetaka Kurita designed the best-known early set in 1999 for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile service. It had 176 emoji, drawing on manga conventions, Chinese characters and street sign and weather pictograms. Earlier sets existed on some Japanese devices, such as a 90-emoji set from SoftBank in 1997, but DoCoMo's was the one that became famous. Emoji reached Unicode in October 2010, with Unicode 6.0. In 2016 the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired the original set.

So a kaomoji is built from keyboard characters and an emoji is a picture. If you can type it with letters and symbols, it is a kaomoji. If it is a tiny image, it is an emoji.

Where kaomoji came from

The oldest confirmed upright kaomoji is (^_^), posted at 00:28 Japan time on 20 June 1986 on ASCII-NET, an early Japanese online service, by Yasushi Wakabayashi. Japanese Wikipedia says he came up with it on his own, without knowing about Western emoticons. English Wikipedia names the same man and year.

Sideways emoticons had come first. Japanese Wikipedia dates the best-known Western ones to 19 September 1982, when Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University proposed sideways faces to mark jokes in online messages. The Japanese upright style grew up beside them, not from them.

Three things pushed kaomoji forward:

• Better character sets. Japanese communication software began to allow Shift JIS, an older Japanese text encoding that goes beyond plain English letters. Kaomoji could then use hiragana, katakana, kanji, Greek and Cyrillic. That is why you see the Greek ω, the Cyrillic Д and kanji such as 皿 in faces. Today, Unicode adds many more symbols.
• Who used them. In the early years, English Wikipedia says, kaomoji were most used by young girls and fans of manga, which fits the kawaii (cute) taste in them.
• 2channel. The Japanese bulletin board 2channel grew a style of text art called Shift JIS art that went far beyond faces, according to English Wikipedia.

How to type kaomoji

There are four easy ways: copy and paste, a built-in panel, shortcuts, and a Japanese keyboard. The menu names below are from the vendors' own help pages and may change. Facts on this page last checked on 2026-10-02.

Copy and paste

Copy a face from this page and paste it anywhere you can type text. Kaomoji are plain Unicode text, so they work in messages, chats and posts without any upload.

On Windows: the emoji keyboard

Press the Windows key and the full stop (period) together while you are typing. Microsoft's support page says this opens the emoji keyboard on Windows 10 and 11, and that Kaomoji is one of its choices, beside GIFs and emoji.

Shortcuts on your phone or computer

You can save your favourites as text shortcuts. Type a short word, such as "kao", and your keyboard swaps in the face.

• iPhone. Apple's steps: in Settings, tap General, tap Keyboard, tap Text Replacement, tap the Add button, enter your phrase (the face) and shortcut, and tap Save.
• Android. Google's Gboard Help explains how to add a word to the keyboard's dictionary. Look for a shortcut option in your keyboard's dictionary settings; the menus vary by phone and version.
• Windows with a Japanese keyboard. Microsoft's Japanese IME page says to right-click the IME options icon in the taskbar and choose Add Word.

A Japanese keyboard

Japanese keyboards have kaomoji built in. On an iPhone's Japanese keyboard, a ^_^ key lists many kaomoji, and you tap one to insert it, according to a 2017 guide from iPhone Mania. On Google Japanese Input, converting かおもじ (the reading of 顔文字) lists about 500 of them, and short words such as しょぼーん, おわた and わーい also bring up faces, according to a 2010 article in Lifehacker Japan. Both are older reports, so the details may have changed.

On a computer, Tofugu says you can add faces to the user 辞書 (じしょ, jisho, “dictionary”) of your Japanese keyboard, with a kana reading as the trigger. Tofugu also points out a search trick: type a feeling in Japanese, then 顔文字, and Google will find lists made by Japanese users.

For cute faces, the same trick works with 可愛い.

Symbols people ask about: ≧∇≦, ❁◡❁, 💦 and 🔞

What ≧∇≦ and ☆*o≧▽≦o*☆ mean

(≧∇≦) is a happy, laughing face. The ≧ and ≦ are eyes squeezed shut with laughter, and ∇ is a wide-open grin. It looks almost the same as ▽, and people seem to use the two for the same mouth. In ☆*o(≧▽≦)o*☆ the face is wrapped in sparkles (☆), and the o on each side most likely stand for raised hands. Together they say "I am so happy I could cheer."

What ❁◡❁ means

❁◡❁ has two flowers where the eyes would be and a small curve for a smile. There is no fixed meaning, but the style is clear: it is a soft, cute, happy face. Flowers are a common decoration in the cute kaomoji style, and Coddy calls a ✿ in the corner a hair clip.

Why 💦 is used in Japan

In manga, a drop of sweat on a character means worry or sadness, according to Japanese Wikipedia's entry on 漫符 (まんぷ, manpu), the symbols that manga uses to show feeling. A small sweat drop can also show a character who is flustered, tense, weary or even excited. The word for sweat is 汗 (あせ, ase, “sweat”). The 💦 emoji looks like the same comic convention: Emojipedia says it resembles the stylised sweat droplets used in comics to show effort or stress. Unicode calls it "Splashing Sweat Symbol", and DoCoMo had it on Japanese keyboards in 1999.

That is only one reading. Online, 💦 is also used as slang with a sexual meaning, so the context decides. In a message about work, exams or running late, it can be the sweat meaning.

What 🔞 means

🔞 is the "No One Under Eighteen Symbol", its official Unicode name. It is a sign that content is for adults only, and people use it to flag adult material online. Writing it three times most likely just adds emphasis.

Which kaomoji feel dated?

Kaomoji follow fashion. A 2022 survey by the Japanese keyboard maker Simeji asked 563 people aged 10 to 24 which kaomoji felt like something an おじさん (ojisan, “old man”) would use. The top three were:

1. (^_^;), the awkward smile with a drop of sweat. Respondents said the sweat feels like an older person's habit.
2. (^_-)-☆, the wink. Respondents said it feels like it is trying too hard to look cool, and that you can tell the age of the sender.
3. ＼(^o^)／, hands up. It first meant joy, but on 2channel it also came to mean "人生オワタ" (my life is over). Young respondents called it uncool.

This is one survey, not a rule, and none of this makes these faces wrong. It is just a useful reminder that a kaomoji, like slang, carries the age of the people who use it.

Kaomoji and katakana: reading the borrowed letters

Look at the lists again and you will find kana inside. The shrug has ツ (tsu) for a face. The wave has ノ (no) for a hand, and a narrow ﾉ is the same katakana in a half-width form. The squid starts with くコ, and the snort of mockery ends with プッ.

Many kaomoji borrow kana for their shapes: a letter can stand in for a hand, a mouth or a whole face. If you want to read these faces as well as copy them, katakana is the place to start. The full story is in What is Katakana?, and if you are just starting out, the whole path is in How to Learn Japanese: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners.

Questions about kaomoji

What does kaomoji mean?

Kaomoji (顔文字) means "face characters": a Japanese emoticon made of letters, punctuation and symbols. It is written with the kanji for "face" and "character".

What are common Japanese emoticons?

The most common are (^_^) for a smile, (T_T) for crying, (>_<) for troubled, (^_^;) for an awkward smile, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for a shrug, (≧▽≦) for laughing and (=^･ω･^=) for a cat. The lists above group many more by feeling.

What does ≧∇≦ mean?

≧∇≦ is a laughing face. The ≧ and ≦ are eyes shut tight with laughter, and ∇ is a wide-open grin.

What does ☆ * o ≧ ▽ ≦ o * ☆ mean?

☆*o(≧▽≦)o*☆ is a very happy, cheering face. The face is laughing, the stars are sparkles, and the o on each side most likely stand for raised hands.

What does this mean ❁ ◡ ❁?

❁◡❁ is a soft, cute, smiling face. The flowers stand in for the eyes, and the small curve is a gentle smile. There is no strict meaning, just a sweet mood.

Why do Japanese use 💦?

The 💦 emoji looks like the manga sign for a drop of sweat, which shows worry, nerves or effort. Online it can also be slang with a sexual meaning, so check the context.

What does 🔞 🔞 🔞 mean?

The 🔞 emoji means "adults only": it is the "No One Under Eighteen Symbol", a warning that content is for those over eighteen. Three in a row most likely adds emphasis.

What does (^_^;) mean?

(^_^;) is an awkward or embarrassed smile. The semicolon is a drop of sweat, a sign of nerves, as in manga.

What does (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ mean?

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ is a face flipping a table in anger or frustration. It is a popular internet meme, and it is not one of the classic Japanese faces.

What is the difference between kaomoji and emoji?

A kaomoji is a face made from keyboard characters, such as (^_^). An emoji is a small picture treated as a single character. Both words are Japanese.

Why are kaomoji read upright, not sideways?

Japanese kaomoji developed as upright faces, not sideways ones. The first one, (^_^), faces the reader, and the eyes carry the feeling. Western emoticons such as :) are read sideways and put the feeling in the mouth.

How do I type kaomoji on my phone?

Copy and paste them, or save favourites as text shortcuts in your keyboard settings. On an iPhone's Japanese keyboard, a ^_^ key lists many kaomoji too.

Sources

• Readings and meanings: JMdict (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0).
• Definition, history, Shift JIS, 2channel and kaomoji examples: English Wikipedia, Kaomoji and List of emoticons; Japanese Wikipedia, 顔文字.
• Emoji, Kurita, DoCoMo's 1999 set and earlier sets: English Wikipedia, Emoji.
• 💦 and 🔞: Emojipedia, Sweat Droplets and No One Under Eighteen; manga sweat drops: Japanese Wikipedia, 漫符 and Japanese with Anime, small sweat drop.
• Eyes and mouths across cultures: Yuki, Maddux and Masuda (2007), Are the windows to the soul the same in the East and West?, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(2); ScienceDaily's report.
• How to read kaomoji and the lists: Kaomoji Guide and kaomojis.jp; Tofugu, Kaomoji; Coddy, Kaomoji, cute kaomoji, happy kaomoji and blush kaomoji; Emoticons Text; Messletters, emoticons, sleep and greetings.
• Typing: Microsoft Support, Windows emoji keyboard and Microsoft Japanese IME; Apple Support, Auto-Correction and predictive text; Google, Gboard Help; iPhone Mania, an article on typing kaomoji on the iPhone (2017); Lifehacker Japan, an article on kaomoji in Google Japanese Input (2010). Facts on this page last checked on 2026-10-02.
• Which kaomoji feel dated: All About, an article on the Simeji survey of kaomoji that feel dated (2022).
• Reviewed independently; the points about 💦 in Japan, the readings of ❁◡❁ and ☆*o≧▽≦o*☆, the face meanings, dated kaomoji and the typing shortcuts are waiting for a native speaker's check.