[Sunday Culture] Do You Know 'Kaomoji', the "Good Morning" (*^▽^)/ Facial Expression Emoticon?

Japanese Emoticons Showing Various Expressions
Developed to Reflect Japanese Language Features Distinguishing Full-Width and Half-Width Characters

Hello everyone, it’s a refreshing weekend morning. ( ´ ▽ ` )?

You might be wondering why there’s an emoticon in this article all of a sudden. On Japanese social networking services (SNS), you can often see emoticons made from symbols like this. Today, I’d like to introduce you to the Japanese emoticon called "Kaomoji" (顔文字).

Kaomoji is a compound word combining the Japanese word for "face," kao (顔), and the word for "character," moji (文字). It refers to emoticons that express various facial expressions. These emoticons depict a wide range of expressions?from smiling human faces to animal appearances?using only symbols that can be input on a computer.

A website organized to use kaomojis for different situations. (Photo by SIMEJI official website)

In fact, in English-speaking countries that use the alphabet keyboard, emoticons are usually horizontal, like ':-)' or ':-('. In contrast, Japan uses upright emoticons that represent a person’s face in a vertical orientation. For example, a smiling face can be written as '(^○^)', and a surprised face as '((°Д°;)', and so on.

There is a particular reason why Japan has specialized in inventing these emoticons. The background lies in the way Japanese is input on computers. Japan distinguishes between full-width and half-width characters.

It’s easier to understand with a comparison. In Korea, when typing documents on a computer, spacing is not a big concern because both Hanja and Hangul characters are full-width characters that fit perfectly into a square shape, one character per cell?just like writing one character per box on manuscript paper.

When a character has a 1:1 width-to-height ratio, it is called full-width, while characters with a 1:2 ratio are called half-width. The half-width characters have half the horizontal width of full-width characters. In Korea, Hangul and Hanja are input as full-width, while alphabets and numbers are input as half-width automatically, so this distinction is not considered a big issue.

However, in Japan, this distinction is strictly maintained. Japanese computer keyboards and laptops have a button to toggle between half-width and full-width characters. When writing papers or reports, hiragana and katakana are often written in full-width, while numbers and English letters are written in half-width.

Full-width and half-width toggle key on a Japanese computer keyboard. (Photo by with pc website)

Even so, usage varies depending on the context. The distinction between full-width and half-width becomes apparent when dealing with official documents or signing up for internet services. Sometimes, after entering an address and pressing the confirm button, an error message appears asking you to enter numbers in full-width. After changing to full-width and pressing confirm again, you might get another error saying that the symbol '-' used for indicating a lot number is half-width and needs to be entered in full-width.

Although it can be cumbersome, this strict distinction between full-width and half-width characters has allowed Kaomoji creators to delicately adjust spacing and create various expressions. Full-width characters take up 2 bytes on a computer, while half-width characters take up 1 byte, allowing for flexible modification and combination on computers.

The story might feel a bit complicated now. So, when did the first Kaomoji appear in Japan?

The first Kaomoji in Japan appeared on June 20, 1986. It is said that the administrator of a PC communication host bulletin board called ASCII Net posted the emoticon '(^_^)', which was the beginning. At that time, not many people recognized this emoticon as a smiling face. Most reactions were like, "Is this just a symbol?"

Later, Shigetaka Kurita from the major Japanese telecommunications company NTT Docomo began developing Kaomoji as a tool to express emotions in emails. This emoticon eventually became known worldwide under the name "emoji." Nowadays, emojis are built into most operating systems such as Windows, Android, and Mac.

Ultimately, Kaomoji and other emoticons can be seen as products reflecting human desires to efficiently convey emotions as communication methods evolved with technological advancements.

Kaomoji emerged when computers became widespread and online communication became active. It will be interesting to see what new forms of communication will appear in the upcoming era of artificial intelligence (AI).