Japanese emoticons, known as emoji and kaomoji, have specific meanings and styles. Emoji are 12x12 pixel pictures invented in 1995 to be used in messages. They often depict Japanese foods and culture. Kaomoji use Japanese characters and punctuation to express emotions without orientation. Some common Japanese emoticons convey happiness, excitement, sadness, crying, and love. Their styles focus on eye positioning and include characters like 愛 to depict feelings.

1. The Japanese Emoticons and their
Specific Meanings

2. Countries all over the world have different languages, beliefs,
traditions, culture, and traits which help us make a distinction of one
country from another. Although they have their differences, still
they are similar at some point. Like in using social media sites
particularly Facebook, we all use this site with our similar intentions
to connect with other people around the world, to meet new friends
and to look for old friends. Whatever reason we have, we all use the
Facebook messenger to converse and with its emoticones para
Facebook which is a Spanish translation for emoticons we can now
set a tone for every conversation. If Americans have emoticons,
Spanish have emoticones; Japanese has their very own Emoji and
Kaomoji.

3. Emoji means “picture letter”. They are set of special icons
that are invented by Shigetaka Kurita in 1995 which is
made in a small 12x12 pixel picture that were used by the
Japanese in sending messages. Almost all Japanese phones
are installed with software that is built with Emoji. It is
very Japanese because they even have an emoticon for
Japanese foods such as onigiri, dango, curry, and their
other cultural things like a traditional looking couple, a
guy bowing in apology, and others.

4. While the Kaomoji probably is what most people are
thinking of as Japanese emoticons. Kaomoji literally
means “face mark”; this is an emoticon style that is made
up of Japanese characters and grammar punctuation that
are used in expressing emotions in text and other cyber
communications. With the Japanese reputation being a
very emotional and creative nation, they boost their
emoticon to be popular all over the world. The other thing
that made it so popular is that people do not need to read
them sideways just to identify what it is trying to portray.
Here are some of the Japanese emoticons:

5. Happy emoticons (^­_^) (>y<) (^ V ^) ­ This emoticon is a
good way to express happiness or joy.
Excited Emoticons Ｏ ( )≧∇≦ Ｏヽ ( ω )★ ★ ノ (๑> <ᴗ ๑)
­ This is a completely different emotion besides happy; the
main feature of the excited emoticon is its eye
composition. The makers of these emoticons focused more
on the reaction of the eyes to show the excitement.
Dead Emoticons ( _ ) (╭ ✖ ✖ ╮ ✖‿✖ ｡ ´✚ฺฺω✚ฺฺ ｀｡ ) ­
These fun­dead emoticons are commonly used in chats if
we want to express being screwed or if we are in a dead
situation. The eyes pass the message perfectly.

6. Crying Emoticons o(╥ ﹏╥ )o (╥_╥)(;* *;) –△
These emoticons portray a very emotional person;
we can use it in our conversation if we are
experiencing real grief or just for a cute and fun chat
expression.

7. Love Emoticons (˘ ³˘) (❤ ・ _ ・ ) (-_-) ♥(❤ ✿ฺฺ´ `∀ ✿ฺฺ) ﾉ
– These emoticons are use to express love for a special
person. For Japanese this is also a character of love 愛 ,
they use it as a part of their emoticons ヽ ( 愛 ´∀ ｀愛 )
ノ

8. Resources:
http://www.mogicons.com/
http://chileanbroad.jimdo.com/2015/03/02/the-
japanese-emoticons-and-their-specific-
meanings/

9. Thank you for reading!

10. Thank you for reading!