Western emoticons tilt sideways and put the feeling in the mouth: :-) versus :-(. Kaomoji stand upright and put most of the feeling in the eyes: ^ ^ is a smile, T T is tears, ಠ ಠ is a stare of disapproval. The outer brackets are the face, and anything outside them is arms or props, which is how (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ can flip a whole table.

More text art: text symbols such as hearts, stars and arrows, emoji combos, or two emoji fused into one picture in the emoji mixer.

Questions

What is a kaomoji?

A kaomoji (顔文字, “face characters”) is a Japanese-style emoticon built from text characters, such as (＾▽＾) or ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ. Unlike Western emoticons like :-), they are read upright, not sideways, and often use Japanese and other Unicode characters for eyes and mouths.

How are kaomoji different from emoji?

Emoji are single picture characters drawn by each platform. Kaomoji are strings of ordinary text characters, so they look the same in any app, take your text colour, and can show actions like table flips that no single emoji covers.

Where did kaomoji come from?

They spread on Japanese bulletin boards and early mobile phones in the 1980s and 1990s, and later on sites like 2channel, before going global through forums and chat.

Why do some kaomoji look broken?

If a font lacks one of the characters, it shows a box instead. Most kaomoji here use common characters; the few rarer ones may break on older devices.