What is a kaomoji – Kaomoji Explained
A kaomoji is a Japanese text face made from keyboard and Unicode characters, such as (≧▽≦), that you read upright instead of sideways. The word means face letters. OpenGlyph lists happy and crying kaomoji below, each stored exactly as sourced, with one tap to copy and no app to install.
A kaomoji is a Japanese text face made from keyboard and Unicode characters, such as (≧▽≦), that you read upright instead of sideways. The word means face letters. OpenGlyph lists happy and crying kaomoji below, each stored exactly as sourced, with one tap to copy and no app to install.
Happy kaomoji — tap any one to copy
57 entries · tap any one to copy Last checked: August 19, 2026
Crying and sad kaomoji — tap any one to copy
73 entries · tap any one to copy Last checked: August 19, 2026
What kaomoji means
Kaomoji comes from Japanese: kao means face and moji means character, so the word is literally face letters. Kaomoji are drawn with characters from many scripts and symbol blocks, which is why they can look far more detailed than a Western smiley.
Kaomoji versus Western emoticons
| Kaomoji | Western emoticon | |
|---|---|---|
| Reading direction | Upright, face-on | Sideways, tilt your head |
| Typical example | (≧▽≦) | :-) |
| Characters used | Many Unicode blocks | Mostly ASCII punctuation |
| Expressiveness | Eyes, mouth, hands and blush marks | Eyes and a mouth |
What a kaomoji is made of
Take ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ. It is four characters, and each has an official Unicode name and code point. None of them is a face on its own; the face only appears when they sit together in order.
| Glyph | Code point | Unicode name |
|---|---|---|
| ʕ | U+0295 | Latin Letter Pharyngeal Voiced Fricative |
| • | U+2022 | Bullet |
| ᴥ | U+1D25 | Latin Letter Ain |
| ʔ | U+0294 | Latin Letter Glottal Stop |
Because the parts come from different Unicode blocks, a device with a limited font can show an empty box in place of one part. Unicode itself is published at unicode.org; look up any character there by its code point. For the character blocks behind some famous faces, see egyptian hieroglyphs in unicode, and for typing them quickly read kaomoji keyboard explained. The whole set lives in the Kaomoji open library. OpenGlyph is a non-profit library and is not affiliated with Unicode, Inc. or any font foundry.
Questions people ask
What is a kaomoji?
A Japanese text face built from characters, read upright, such as (≧▽≦).
What does kaomoji mean?
The word combines Japanese kao, face, and moji, character: face letters.
Is a kaomoji an emoji?
No. An emoji is one Unicode character with its own picture; a kaomoji is a string of several characters.
Can I use kaomoji everywhere?
Most apps that accept text accept kaomoji, though a missing font can show boxes. We have not tested every app.