Text Faces
Japanese kaomoji for every mood, ready to copy.
About kaomoji
Kaomoji — 顔文字, literally "face characters" — are Japanese emoticons read upright
rather than sideways. That is the whole trick: (◕‿◕) reads as a face
immediately, where the Western :-) needs you to tilt your head. The style
emerged on Japanese bulletin boards in the 1980s and spread worldwide once Unicode made
the necessary characters available everywhere.
They are built purely from text, so they paste anywhere and inherit whatever font is around them. Browse by mood, or search by name.
Kaomoji vs. Western emoticons
Western emoticons are rotated ninety degrees and rely on punctuation: :-),
;-), :-(. Kaomoji stay upright and use a much wider character
set — Japanese kana, Cyrillic, mathematical symbols and diacritics — which lets them show
arms, tears, blushing cheeks and props.
The practical difference is expressiveness. A Western emoticon has a handful of variations; kaomoji can convey shrugging, table-flipping, hugging and sleeping without any pictures at all.
Frequently asked questions
What does ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ mean?
It is the shrug — a way of saying "who knows" or "nothing I can do about it". The ツ in the middle is the Japanese katakana character tsu, used here because it looks like a face with a wry smile.
Why does my kaomoji break when I paste it?
Some apps strip or reorder the combining characters that kaomoji rely on, and a few trim backslashes. The shrug is the usual casualty because it contains a backslash. Pasting into a plain text field first, then copying from there, normally survives.
What is the difference between kaomoji and emoji?
Kaomoji are assembled from ordinary text characters and are read upright. Emoji are single characters that the operating system draws as a picture. Kaomoji are more flexible and expressive; emoji are more consistent across devices.
How do I type kaomoji on a phone?
Copying is far quicker than typing. Japanese keyboards on iOS and Android include a kaomoji section, but on an English keyboard there is no built-in shortcut, so tapping one here and pasting it is the practical route.