Japanese Emoticons

How these faces work

1. Look for the eye style that fits your mood — round, crescent, kana-accented, or bracket-framed.
2. Tap Copy to grab the full character string including any kana, brackets, or arm characters.
3. Paste into your message; if a rare glyph shows as a box, pick a simpler face from the same grid.

What are Japanese emoticons?

Japanese emoticons (kaomoji) are usually read upright, with eyes doing most of the emotional work. This page focuses on that classic construction rather than Western sideways smiles or single emoji pictographs.

Punctuation, kana, and symbols combine into faces that stay editable text. If a rare glyph shows as a box, your device font is missing that code point. Try a simpler face from the same grid; stacked multi-line art also appears on mood pages such as cute when it fits the category.

Japanese emoticons differ from Western ones mainly in orientation. Instead of turning your head sideways to read :-), you see the face upright, with emotion focused in the eyes. Full-width characters, katakana, and symbols from Japanese keyboard sets give designers a wide range of shapes, which is why these faces can show subtle moods like embarrassment or quiet relief that sideways smileys struggle to express.

People look for these faces under many names: emoticons Japanese style, Japan emoticons, JP emoticons, Japanese face emoji, or emote Japan. They all mean kaomoji (顔文字, literally "face characters"): upright faces built from punctuation, kana, and symbols rather than a picture. Because they are plain text, every one of them works as Japanese emoji copy and paste in a chat, a bio, or a comment box, and looks the same on iPhone, Android, Windows, and Mac.

The style differs from the Western :) in one way that matters when you choose a face: Japanese emoticons put the emotion in the eyes (^_^ is happy, T_T is crying, ¬_¬ is unimpressed) instead of the mouth, which is why the same mouth can carry very different moods.

Frequently asked questions

• Do I need a Japanese keyboard to type these emoticons?+

  No. Copying from this page is enough, since the characters are standard Unicode. A Japanese input method can help if you want to build your own faces from scratch.

• Can I type Japanese emoticons on my keyboard?+

  Some, like (^_^), use plain keyboard emoticons characters. Faces with kana or rare symbols are easier to copy here; Windows also has a kaomoji panel under Win + .

• What are Japanese emoticons?+

  Japanese emoticons are text faces built from punctuation and symbols, typically read the right way up. They are the same family many people call kaomoji, distinct from sideways Western smiles like :-).

• How should I read a Japanese emoticon?+

  Read it upright, the way you read a short line of chat. Eyes sit in the middle; arms or cheeks often sit on the sides. You do not need to tilt your head the way classic Western emoticons ask you to.

• Why do some Japanese faces need special fonts?+

  Some faces use less-common Unicode symbols. If your phone or browser font lacks those glyphs, you may see empty boxes. Pick a face built from more common punctuation, or paste into an app with broader Unicode coverage.

• Is this page the same as text faces?+

  No. This page sticks to classic Japanese-style faces. Shrug, Lenny, and other Western-style text faces are on the text faces page.

• How do I copy and paste Japanese emoticons?+

  Tap Copy under any face on this page, then paste it with Ctrl+V on Windows, Cmd+V on Mac, or a long-press and Paste on a phone. The whole string is copied, brackets and kana included, so you never have to retype tricky characters. If a rare glyph shows as an empty box in your app, choose a simpler face from the same grid.

• Is a Japanese face emoji the same as a Japanese emoticon?+

  In everyday search, mostly yes, but they are different things. A face emoji is a small picture whose look changes by phone brand. A Japanese emoticon (kaomoji) is text such as (^_^) or (´・ω・`), so it looks identical everywhere and can be pasted into usernames, bios, and documents where pictures are not allowed.

• How do I get a Japanese emoji keyboard or Japanese keyboard emoticons on my phone?+

  On iPhone, add the Japanese (Kana) keyboard in Settings, then tap the ^_^ key to open its emoticon list. On Android, the Gboard emoji panel has an emoticon tab, and on Windows you can press Win + period and open the kaomoji tab. If you would rather not install anything, copy and paste Japanese symbols and faces from this page instead.

• Which Japanese emoticons show sadness?+

  Faces with downturned mouths, tears, or drooping eyes, such as (T_T) and (；＿；), read as sad. Browse the quiet, downcast ones on the sad kaomoji page and the teary ones on the crying kaomoji page.