What Are Kaomoji? The Complete Guide to Japanese Text Emoticons (ʘ‿ʘ)

Before emoji existed, Japanese internet users were already expressing complex emotions with just a keyboard. They called them kaomoji (顔文字), literally "face characters", text-art faces built from standard punctuation and Unicode symbols. Unlike Western emoticons that you tilt your head to read (like :-) ), kaomoji are designed to be read upright, and many are impressively expressive.

This guide covers what kaomoji are, where they come from, how to read and type them, and a full list of the most popular ones sorted by mood. If you just want faces to copy right now, the kaomoji collection has hundreds of them ready to tap.

What Are Kaomoji?

Kaomoji are text-based emoticons made from a combination of letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and Japanese or Unicode characters. The word breaks down cleanly: kao (顔) means face, and moji (文字) means character. Put together, a kaomoji is a little face drawn entirely out of characters your keyboard can already produce.

The key thing that sets them apart is direction. A Western smiley like :-) lies on its side, so you rotate your head to see the eyes and mouth. A kaomoji such as ( ^_^ ) sits the right way up. Because of that, the eyes do most of the emotional work. Change the eyes from ^ to T and a smile becomes a cry: ( T_T ). Swap them for ♥ and the face falls in love: (♥_♥). Once you notice this pattern, you can read almost any kaomoji at a glance.

A Short History of Kaomoji

Kaomoji originated in Japan in the early 1980s on ASCII bulletin board systems, where users needed a way to convey tone in text-only environments. The first widely cited example, (^_^), is credited to Japanese BBS culture around 1986, and the style spread fast through the 1990s as internet access grew. Japanese input methods made this easier than it would have been on a plain English keyboard, since they gave typists ready access to a huge range of symbols and full-width characters.

Western emoticons took a different route. Scott Fahlman famously proposed :-) and :-( on a Carnegie Mellon message board in 1982 to mark jokes and serious posts. Both ideas answered the same problem, plain text hides tone, but they answered it in opposite orientations. Kaomoji then kept evolving into elaborate scenes with arms, motion lines, and props, which is how you end up with a full table flip: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻. For the wider story of how these text faces led into the picture emoji we use today, see our complete history of emoji.

Kaomoji vs Emoji vs Emoticons

All three exist to add feeling to text, but they work differently. Emoji are single picture characters defined in Unicode, so they render as small images and can look slightly different on an iPhone versus an Android phone. Kaomoji are plain text, which means they display identically on every device and platform, with no rendering step at all. Western emoticons are the older, simpler ancestor, read sideways and built from just a few characters.

How to Read a Kaomoji

A kaomoji usually has three parts: a left bracket, the face, and a right bracket, for example ( and ) around ^_^. The center is where the emotion lives, and it splits into two elements. The outer marks are the eyes, and the middle mark is the mouth or nose. In (T_T), the two T shapes are streaming eyes. In (>﹏<), the arrows are eyes screwed shut. Anything outside the brackets is usually a hand, an arm, or a motion effect, such as the ﾉ that turns a face into a wave in ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ. Start by reading the eyes, then the mouth, then the arms, and the meaning falls into place.

Popular Kaomoji by Mood

Here are the most-used faces grouped by emotion. Every one below is plain text, so you can highlight it, copy it, and paste it anywhere.

Happy & Positive

• ( ^_^ ): Classic happy face
• ( ＾◡＾ ): Big smile
• (*^▽^*): Excited and happy
• ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ: Cheerful wave
• ヽ(´▽`)/: Hands up, joyful
• (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧: Magical excitement

Laughing

• www: Japanese lol (from warau/笑, "to laugh")
• (≧▽≦): Laughing hard
• (*≧▽≦): Grinning with tears
• ( ≧∇≦ ): Burst of laughter

Sad & Crying

• (；＿；): Crying
• ( T_T ): Classic sad/crying
• (╥_╥): Sobbing
• ( ；ω；): Quietly sad
• ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´ω`ﾟ)ﾟ｡: Full ugly cryCopy

Surprised & Shocked

• (⊙_⊙): Wide-eyed surprise
• Σ(°△°|||): Complete shock
• (°o°): Simple surprise
• (@_@): Overwhelmed or dizzy

Embarrassed & Shy

• (〃￣ω￣〃): Shy and blushing
• (＃￣ω￣): Embarrassed
• (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄): Very flustered
• (*ﾉωﾉ): Hiding in embarrassment

Angry

• ( ｀o´ ): Annoyed
• (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻: Table flip (the OG rage quit)
• ヽ( `д´*)ノ: Angry tantrum
• ( ＞﹏＜ ): Upset and pouty

Cute & Adorable

• (=^･ω･^=): Cat face
• (=^･ｪ･^=): Curious cat
• (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ: Giving a hug
• (ˆ ω ˆ): Sweet simple face
• ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ: Bear face

Shrug / Indifferent

• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: The legendary shrug
• (ーωー): Unbothered
• ( ・_・): Neutral, unimpressed

Love & Affection

• (♥_♥): Heart eyes
• ( ˘ ³˘)♥: Blowing a kiss
• ( ♡‿♡ ): In love
• ♡(˃͈ ᵕ ˂͈ ): Adoring

How to Type Kaomoji

Assembling these faces by hand is slow, since a single kaomoji can pull characters from several Unicode blocks. Copy and paste is almost always the fastest route. Here are the practical options:

• Copy and paste: Browse the kaomoji library, tap any face to copy it, then paste it into your chat, caption, or bio. The same tap-to-copy approach works for plain emoji on our emoji copy and paste page.
• iPhone shortcut: Go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Text Replacement. Add a kaomoji as the phrase and a short code such as "shrug" as the shortcut. Type the shortcut and it auto-expands into the full face.
• Windows: Press Win and the period key to open the emoji panel, then check the Symbols and Kaomoji tabs.
• Mac: Open the Character Viewer with Control, Command, and Space, which includes a kaomoji section.

If you get stuck moving between phone and desktop, our guide on how to type emojis on every device walks through each platform step by step.

Where Kaomoji Are Still Popular

Despite emoji being everywhere, kaomoji are still widely used, especially in gaming communities, anime and manga fandoms, on Twitter and X, and across the Tumblr-era nostalgic aesthetic. The shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ has become one of the most recognizable internet symbols, and the table flip (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ is a classic that never gets old. Streamers and Discord servers lean on them for reaction spam, and a well-placed (◕‿◕) can soften a message in a way a plain word cannot.

They also carry a practical advantage. Because they are plain text, they work in every app, on every device, and across every era of technology, with no font rendering, no missing-square boxes, and no version support required. That reliability is a big reason they have outlived so many trends. If you like building things out of characters this way, the same idea powers our text art gallery and the copy-paste symbols library, and you can dress up a name with the fancy text generator. To pair faces with picture emoji instead, try our roundup of creative emoji combinations for texting.

Browse the full collection of kaomoji sorted by category on the kaomoji hub: over a hundred faces ready to copy with a single tap.

If you came here for kaomoji to actually use rather than the background, we have over 200 sorted by mood in cute kaomoji to copy and paste, including the dead inside set that people ask about most.