Kaomoji Emoticons
Kaomoji emoticons are similar to smileys, but they often incorporate Japanese characters. While they originated in Japan, Kaomoji emoticons are now used in many other countries as well. Because of the wide range of characters available, Kaomoji smileys can be used to express emotions, actions, and characters with more detail than traditional western emoticons.
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 a 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 is the 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.
At the beginning of the 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.
Kaomoji history in a nutshell
If you have any Japanese friends, you know most Japanese love to use text emoticons. With chat applications, like LINE, providing an amazing range of stamps, digital communication will only get crazier from now on. In fact, you even have the opportunity to create your originals. And only to think that it all started with some simple combinations of symbols typed out on the keyboard. Yes, 🙂 and (^_^) , I am talking about you guys!
The first use of emoticon dates back to when the internet, as we know it today, did not exist. Communicating by text with a computer was something completely new. Sometimes it even resulted in conflicts, as it was hard to tell if someone was serious or not just by reading the text. That’s why in 1982, Scot Fahlman was the first to propose the use of emoticons. The 🙂 emoticon was to be used for something that was meant as a joke. For the opposite, 🙁 represented something that was not. This marked the start of western emoticons.
Four years later, the first Japanese emoticon made its way to the screen thanks to Yasushi Wakabayashi in correspondence through ASCII Net, a Japanese forerunner of the internet. Today, Japanese emoticon goes by the name kaomoji. This literally translates to “face characters”.
Sorry face: Western :‑c Japanese m(_ _)m
Crying face: Western;-( Japanese (T_T)
Angry face: Western :-@ Japanese (ーー゛)
