Kaomoji (・ω・) Japanese Emoticons

Upright Japanese text faces, from 2channel classics like ( ´∀`) to sparkly spell-casting kaomoji. Tap a face to copy it, or tap a few to line them up in the bar above.

The faces you will see most often in chats and comments.

Classic 2channel Kaomoji

Old-school faces with half-width katakana eyes and arms.

Surprised and Confused Kaomoji

Magic and Sparkle Kaomoji ✧

Wands, spells and a trail of glitter.

Kaomoji Doing Things

Writing, running, eating, sleeping and singing.

Bowing, Apologising and Saluting Kaomoji

Smug and Cool Kaomoji

Explore Symbols, Emoticons and Fonts

What Are Kaomoji?

Kaomoji are Japanese-style emoticons made from ordinary text characters. The word joins 顔 (kao, face) and 文字 (moji, character), and the thing that really sets them apart from Western smileys is orientation: a kaomoji faces you head-on, so you read it without tilting your head. Where an English speaker types :-) on its side, a Japanese user types (^_^), with the eyes on top and the mouth underneath.

Every piece of a kaomoji is a Unicode character. Brackets make the cheeks, katakana like ﾉ and ﾟ become arms and eyes, the Cyrillic letter Д turns into a wide-open mouth, and the Kannada letter ಠ gives the famous disapproving stare. Many faces also use full-width punctuation such as （ ） and ＾, which Japanese input methods produce by default and which take up the same space as a kanji. That is why some kaomoji look wider or more evenly spaced than faces typed on an English keyboard.

A quick honesty note: a kaomoji is a drawing made of letters, and a screen reader has no idea it is looking at a face. Most will read each symbol aloud by name ("left parenthesis, circumflex, low line…") or quietly skip the ones they do not recognise. Use kaomoji to colour a message, not to carry its meaning, and add a word or two when the feeling actually matters.

Why Use Kaomoji?

Kaomoji pack a lot into a small space, and they have a range that emoji struggle to match. An emoji face is one fixed drawing, while a kaomoji can bow, run, cast a spell, slam a desk or hide behind its hands. Because the parts are interchangeable, there are thousands of variations and people invent new ones all the time.

How to read a kaomoji

Once you know the parts, most faces decode themselves. Start with the eyes: ^ ^ is smiling, ; ; or T T is tears, ° ° is shock, and - - is sleepy or unimpressed. Then check the mouth: ω is a small cat-like mouth that reads as content or a little smug, Д is a gaping shout, ▽ is a wide grin, and the kanji 益 shows gritted teeth. Finally, look outside the brackets. Arms like ヽ and ﾉ raised on both sides mean celebration, fists such as ง are up for a fight, and m ... m are hands flat on the floor for a deep bow. Sweat drops (; or ヾ) and sparkles (✧ ･ﾟ) add the finishing touch.

Where they came from

Sideways Western emoticons are usually dated to 1982, when computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed :-) and :-( on a Carnegie Mellon message board. Upright faces showed up on Japanese computer networks a few years later; the smiley (^_^) is often credited to a user of the ASCII NET service around 1986, although early online history is patchy and hard to pin down. The style flourished on 2channel, the enormous anonymous Japanese forum that opened in 1999, where users drew whole characters and scenes out of Shift JIS text. Faces such as ( ´∀`) and ( ﾟДﾟ) grew out of that culture, and many classics still carry its half-width katakana eyes and arms.

These days kaomoji are a shared internet habit rather than a strictly Japanese one. Anime and gaming communities use them constantly, they were everywhere on old blogging platforms, and they turn up wherever people want a reaction that feels hand-made. For the wider picture of text faces, including the sideways Western kind, the emoticons hub lays every style out side by side.

Where Can You Use Kaomoji?

Kaomoji work in nearly any text field, but each platform handles them a little differently:

If part of a face appears as an empty box, the viewer's device is missing a font for that character. Katakana and Cyrillic are almost always covered; rare marks and stacked combining characters are the usual suspects.

How to Copy and Paste Kaomoji

  1. Browse the sections above and pick a kaomoji that fits the moment: 2channel classics, surprised reactions, magic spells, actions or bows.
  2. Tap the face and it is copied straight away. Every tap also drops that face into the bar at the top, so you can collect several and send them as one line.
  3. Paste it into your message, bio or comment, or press Copy in the bar to grab the whole collection at once.

Tips for Using Kaomoji

Build your own

Remixing is half the fun. Keep a frame you like, such as ( ), and swap the eyes and mouth: (・ω・), (^ω^), (;ω;). Add arms on the outside when you want movement. A face you invent this way is every bit as valid as the famous ones.

Watch the width

Mixing full-width （ ） with half-width ( ) inside one face can make it look lopsided. If a face looks off after you edit it, check that both brackets come from the same set.

Pair faces with words

Kaomoji sit best at the end of a sentence, after a space. "Running late, sorry m(_ _)m" is perfectly clear, whereas a message made only of symbols can puzzle anyone who does not know the style.

Keep the vibe consistent

When decorating a bio, pick faces with the same feel as the rest of it. Soft, sleepy faces go well with the letters on the cute fonts page, while a sly, suggestive grin belongs with the Lenny face crowd instead.

Kaomoji FAQ

What does kaomoji mean?

It is Japanese for "face characters": kao means face and moji means character or letter. In practice it refers to upright text faces like (^_^) rather than sideways ones like :-).

How do you pronounce kaomoji?

Roughly "kah-oh-moh-jee", with four even syllables. English speakers often blur the first two into "kow", which everyone will still understand.

What is the difference between kaomoji and emoji?

Emoji are single pictures defined in the Unicode standard and drawn by each phone maker. Kaomoji are strings of ordinary characters arranged into a face, so you can change them piece by piece and they look much the same on every device that has the fonts.

How do I type kaomoji on my phone?

Some keyboards include a kaomoji list, for example the Japanese keyboard on iPhone and the emoticon section in several Android keyboards. The simplest route is to copy them from a page like this and save favourites as text replacements.

What does (´・ω・`) mean?

It is a gently disappointed or dejected face, sometimes read as "oh well" or "that is a shame". The small ω mouth keeps it soft rather than truly upset.

What does orz mean?

It is a tiny stick figure kneeling with its head on the ground: o is the head, r the arms and body, z the legs. People use it for defeat, despair or an exaggerated apology.

Why do some kaomoji show boxes on my screen?

A box means your device has no font containing one of the characters in the face. Updating the operating system usually helps; otherwise choose a face built from more common characters.

Are kaomoji and Lenny faces the same thing?

Not quite. The Lenny face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) is a single Western-born meme face with its own suggestive meaning, while kaomoji are a whole Japanese tradition of upright faces covering every mood.

Why does my kaomoji break on Discord?

Characters such as *, _ and ~ are Markdown formatting on Discord, so parts of the face can vanish or turn italic. Put a backslash in front of those characters, or wrap the face in backticks to show it as code.

Can I make my own kaomoji?

Yes. Pick brackets for the face, choose eyes and a mouth, then add arms or props outside. There is no official list, so any combination that reads as a face counts.