◕3◕ >‿‿◕ ﾟ▽ﾟ ^-^* ≧∇≦ ,,#ﾟДﾟ ･ω･ (ﾟДﾟ|||) (￣(エ)￣)

★нёllоヾ(*ﾟ∀｀*))ﾟДﾟ((*´∀ﾟ*)ﾉﾞнёllо★

[ ●´･Д･｀]σ○o｡（こ）（ん）（に）（ち）（は）｡o○a[ ｀･ω･´○]

顔文字, kaomoji, the Japanese form of emoticons, is totally beyond what we call “smilies”; they have angry faces, sad faces, kawaii faces, many to choose from to express your own feelings on various internet chatrooms, asian cell phones in text formats.

Kaomoji used to be an internet subculture, and after widely spreading through internet chatrooms and sms (short message from cellar phones), it has become a new category of Kawaii culture as of a couple years ago and become popular throughout mainstream Japanese popular culture.

Since internet chatrooms and SMS Short Message Service from cell phones have become daily important communication tools, people try to find another way to express their emotions on the platforms. For some time there have been icons to express simple feelings. During the 20th century, western culture developed the word ‘Emoticon’ by combing the word ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’ to describe those icons. Kaomoji is the Japanese version of emoticons.

顔文字 Kaomoji – the word ‘顔’ Kao means face, and ‘文字’ means words, which Kaomoji meaning using words to describe different faces, is different than western smileys which only means happy faces and happy expressions.

The difference between Japanese Kaomoji and Western Emoticons:
Western emoticons have to be understand at a 90 degree angle (e.g. or :-0 ) , and Kaomoji is designed in sideways. Moreover, the important of Kaomoji is to express the emotion by focus on the design of the eyes, rather than western emoticons which focus on the design of the mouth.

The influence of manga / comic culture:
From the beginning of Kaomoji, the eyes are made using 「*」,「^」,「-」, for mouths use「_」,「.」,「o」 to make simple happy faces like 「^_^」,「*_*」,「^o^」,「^_~」, later on, comic culture became the influence to make embarrassed face 「-_-|||」like the same lines in comic book’s character.

The beginning of Kaomoji:
According to wikipedia, the first Kaomoji is based on these first group of icons,『 』（smile） と 『 』（angry）which was developed by IBM‘s Scott Fahlman in September 19, 1982.

The making of Kaomoji:
Japanese used their own Japanese computer text system, mixed with text icons from keyboard, and simple ASCII to create those kawaii text faces.

more kaomoji links:

Kaomoji in wikipedia

Kaomoji library

Kaomoji home

Chinese and Thai Kaomoji

ヾ(・ω-｀o)вyё(o-ω・)ノвyё~~~~