Copy Japanese kaomoji, the expressive text emoticons like ( ^_^ ) and shrug faces, sorted by mood. One click to copy any of 813 faces.
A kaomoji (顔文字, かおもじ), literally “face characters”, is a Japanese emoticon built from ordinary text characters and read upright rather than sideways, so (^_^) looks straight back at you with no head tilt. This page holds 813 kaomoji sorted into 30 moods, from cute and love to the shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and one click copies any face.
Kaomoji Copy and Paste
Every face below is plain text, so kaomoji copy and paste cleanly into any app that takes typing. Tap a face to copy it, search by mood or meaning, tap the star to keep a favourite, or press Random face when you cannot decide.
813 kaomoji in 30 categories. Click any face to copy it.
Favourites
Recently copied
Cute kaomoji
The kawaii (可愛い, かわいい) end of the collection: round eyes, soft cheeks, tiny paws. Cute is the most searched kaomoji mood of all.
Happy kaomoji
The everyday faces. Reach for one when a message needs a smile that a plain period cannot carry.
Love and heart kaomoji
Hearts, blushes, and heart shaped eyes. These belong in the reply you send at midnight, not the one you send to your manager.
Sad and crying kaomoji
Small tears and full sobs. Useful when you want to say something is hard without making it heavy.
Angry kaomoji
From a raised eyebrow to a full shout. The look of disapproval lives here, and it does a lot of work in one line.
Blushing and shy kaomoji
Blushing, hiding, peeking through fingers. Perfect for the reply that follows a typo.
Cat kaomoji
Whiskers built from equals signs, paws made from Thai letters. Cat faces are the most copied animal kaomoji on the internet.
Bunny kaomoji
Long ears drawn with slashes, a twitchy nose in the middle. Bunny kaomoji are the softest thing in this collection.
Bear kaomoji
The bear is one line of Latin glottal stops with a snout in the middle. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
Dog kaomoji
Floppy ears from a capital U, a snout from a katakana character. Dogs read friendlier than cats do.
Animal kaomoji
A small zoo beyond the cats and dogs: pigs, frogs, owls, penguins, and one very round monkey.
Star kaomoji
Stars sit outside the brackets like little lights around a face. Good for wishes, good news, and anything you want to make shine.
Sparkle kaomoji
The sparkle marks ✧ and ﾟ turn any face into something magical. Japanese chat has used them as a shorthand for delight for decades.
Flower kaomoji
A ✿ or ❀ tucked beside a face reads as a flower in the hair. Japanese chat has used it as a soft, feminine finishing touch since the 2000s.
Angel kaomoji
A halo drawn with a small circle above the head, wings made from brackets. Angel faces read as innocent, sometimes very deliberately so.
Greeting kaomoji
Hellos, goodbyes, thank yous, and apologies. The bowing faces come straight from Japanese chat manners, where a small bow closes almost any message.
Dancing kaomoji
Faces mid step, with music notes trailing behind. They pair well with a good song link.
Hug kaomoji
Open arms in text form. Send one when a friend needs holding and you are on the wrong continent.
Celebration kaomoji
Arms in the air and confetti on both sides. Made for launch days and exam results.
Cool and smug kaomoji
Sunglasses, smirks, and the Lenny face. Wear one when you already know the answer.
Shrug kaomoji
The most copied kaomoji on the internet. It says who knows, and it says it politely.
Table flip kaomoji
One furious little person and one airborne table. Somebody always puts it back.
Surprised kaomoji
Wide eyes and open mouths. Paste one after news you did not see coming.
Confused kaomoji
The faces for when you have read the message three times and still do not follow.
Sleepy kaomoji
Yawns, nodding heads, and little zzZ trails. Good for late night group chats.
Thinking kaomoji
Raised eyebrows, tilted heads, and the famous lying down face. Doubt has a lot of shapes.
Scared kaomoji
Trembling brackets and cold sweat. Good for horror film reactions and Monday morning inboxes.
Determined kaomoji
Flexed arms and set jaws. The Japanese word for the feeling is ganbaru (頑張る, がんばる), to push on.
Wink and kiss kaomoji
One eye closed, lips pursed. Small, quick, and just flirty enough.
Food and drink kaomoji
Tea cups made from the kanji 旦 and beer mugs from 自. Offer someone a drink without leaving the chat.
No faces match that search. Try happy, cat, shrug, love or table flip.
Kaomoji List by Mood
Thirty categories, each with its own section above. The counts come straight from the picker, so they are always current.
A kaomoji is a Japanese text emoticon assembled from ordinary Unicode characters: brackets, punctuation, kana, and symbols borrowed from a dozen other scripts. The word joins kao (顔, face) and moji (文字, character), so a kaomoji is literally a face made of characters.
The difference from a Western emoticon is orientation. A face like :) asks you to rotate your head ninety degrees to see the smile. A kaomoji does not. It sits level on the line with its eyes and mouth already facing forward. Kaomoji also put the expression in the eyes rather than the mouth, which is why (^_^) and (T_T) read so differently while their mouths stay identical.
Because each one is plain text and not an image, a kaomoji looks the same wherever you paste it. It never gets swapped for a different picture between Apple, Android, and Discord, and it never fails to load.
Kaomoji Meaning: How to Read a Face
Once you see the grammar, most kaomoji become readable at a glance instead of memorised. Three rules cover almost everything.
The brackets are the outline of the face.( and ) are the most common, but ʕ ʔ gives you a bear, = = gives you cat whiskers, and ▼ ▼ gives you floppy dog ears.
Whatever sits inside the brackets is the eyes and mouth. The eyes carry the mood: ^ ^ for happy, T T for crying, ° ° for shocked, ¬ ¬ for unimpressed.
Whatever sits outside the brackets is arms, hands, and props. That is how \(^o^)/ gets its raised arms and how a table ends up airborne.
Three worked examples:
(￣ρ￣) is a face with flat, half-closed eyes ￣ ￣ and an open, drooling mouth ρ. It means hungry.
(ノ°益°)ノ has furious eyes ° °, a shouting mouth 益, and a katakana ノ on each side for arms thrown up. It means throwing a fit.
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ uses two Latin glottal stops as a bear’s rounded head, dot eyes • •, and ᴥ for the snout. It means a friendly bear.
Kaomoji pair naturally with kawaii culture, the Japanese love of cuteness, which is why so many of them have big round eyes and soft, blushing cheeks. If you enjoy that side of Japanese pop culture, the photo-booth tradition of purikura works the same instinct in a visual form.
Kaomoji vs Emoji vs Emoticons
These three look similar and work differently. Emoticons came first and are the simplest. Emoji are pictures. Kaomoji sit in between: made of text like an emoticon, but read upright and drawn from a far wider palette of characters.
Kaomoji
Emoticon
Emoji
Origin and date
Japan, on the ASCII NET bulletin board, 1986
United States, Carnegie Mellon, 1982
Japan, NTT DoCoMo, 1999
How they render
Ordinary text characters
Ordinary text characters
Picture characters drawn separately by each platform
Orientation
Read upright
Read sideways
Upright picture
Where they work
Anywhere you can type
Anywhere you can type
Anywhere with an emoji font
Example
(^_^)
:-)
a yellow smiling face
The practical consequence is consistency. A kaomoji is a string you can edit, stretch, and combine, and it looks identical on every device. The same emoji can change expression between Apple, Android, and Discord.
The Most Popular Kaomoji and What They Mean
These are the faces that escaped Japanese chat and became internet furniture. Every one of them is in the picker above.
Face
Name
Meaning
Typical use
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The shrug
Who knows, not my problem
Deflecting a question
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Table flip
Rage quitting
Reacting to bad news
┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)
Table unflip
Order restored
The apology after the flip
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Lenny face
A knowing, suggestive smirk
Innuendo in chat
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
The bear
Friendly and harmless
Soft greetings
(=^･ω･^=)
The cat
Playful affection
Anything cat related
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Sparkle throw
Magic and delight
Announcing something fun
(ಠ_ಠ)
Look of disapproval
Judging you, silently
Mock disapproval
(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ
The hug
Warmth and comfort
Consoling a friend
ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ
Flexing arms
Strength and resolve
Gym and study posts
(╥_╥)
Crying face
Plain sadness
Bad news, sad films
(*ﾉωﾉ)
Hiding face
Blushing, embarrassed
Compliments and flirting
(・∀・)ノ
The wave
Hello or goodbye
Opening a chat
♪(┌・。・)┌
Dancing face
Celebration in motion
Sharing a song
(￢_￢)
Side eye
Doubt, suspicion
Reacting to a claim
(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و
Ganbatte face
Determination
Cheering someone on
How to Type Kaomoji on Android, iPhone, Windows and Mac
Copying from the picker is the fastest route, and it works on every device. If you want to type them yourself, every major platform has a built-in way in.
Platform
Steps
Android (Gboard)
Open Gboard settings, tap Languages, then Add keyboard, and add Japanese. While typing, tap the globe key to switch to it, then tap the emoji key and swipe across to the kaomoji tab.
iPhone and iPad
Go to Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards, Add New Keyboard, then Japanese and Kana. While typing, hold the globe key to switch to the Japanese keyboard and tap the kaomoji key on the bottom row, third from the left.
Windows
Press the Windows key and the full stop together to open the emoji panel, then pick the Kaomoji tab. The panel holds Emoji, GIF, Kaomoji, Symbols, and Clipboard history, and no Japanese keyboard is needed.
Mac
Add the Japanese input source, type a reading in kana, then press the space bar to convert. The candidate window offers symbols and faces alongside the usual kanji suggestions.
For the handful of faces you use every day, the fastest route on any device is text replacement. Map a short trigger like ;shrug to the full string once in your keyboard settings and it expands everywhere you type. If you are curious about the kana on that Japanese keyboard, our guide to hiragana vs katakana explains which script is which.
Where Kaomoji Came From
The oldest confirmed kaomoji is dated precisely. At 00:28 on 20 June 1986, Japan time, a user named Wakabayashi Yasushi posted (^_^) on a board of the ASCII NET service, an early Japanese online network. That post is the one Japanese sources point to as the birth of the upright face.
Four years earlier and eight thousand kilometres away, Scott Fahlman had proposed :-) and :-( at Carnegie Mellon in 1982. The two traditions are believed to have developed independently, and they solved the same problem in opposite directions: Fahlman rotated the face to fit a small ASCII set, while Japanese users, who already had kana, full-width symbols, and thousands of characters within easy reach, could keep the face upright and put the feeling in the eyes.
Emoji arrived much later. Shigetaka Kurita’s set of 176 emoji for NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode launched in 1999, thirteen years after that first (^_^), and Unicode did not adopt emoji until 2010, when version 6.0 encoded 722 of them. Kaomoji never needed a standards body: they were built from characters that already existed. That is why the shrug, which borrows the katakana ツ for its face, still pastes cleanly into software written decades after it was invented.
Japanese Emoticons: The Families and How They Are Built
Japanese emoticons is the plain-English name for kaomoji, and once you can read the grammar above, two structural families cover almost everything.
Single-line faces are one compact expression, built for the middle of a sentence. That is where the mood categories live: happy, cute, love, sad, angry, surprised, sleepy, and the animals. They sit inside a message without interrupting it, which is why they work so well in otaku and gaming chat where the joke has to land fast.
The second family is the multi-part scene, where the face is only one actor in a small tableau. The table flip and the shrug both belong here, along with (っ´ω`)ﾉ(╥ω╥), one figure consoling another. Scenes work best on their own line, since a chat client that wraps mid-scene will break the picture in half.
A third habit is worth knowing: decorators. A ♡ outside the brackets makes any face affectionate, a ✧ makes it magical, and a ✿ reads as a flower in the hair. The same base face can be recoloured half a dozen ways without changing a single eye, which is the trick behind so much of the moe aesthetic and the round-headed chibi style.
How to Copy a Kaomoji
Click or tap any face in the picker and it lands on your clipboard straight away, with no highlighting or right-clicking needed. Three shortcuts make it faster:
Search filters all 813 faces at once by mood, meaning, tag, or category, so typing “cat” shows only cats and typing “flip” shows only table flips.
The star on each face saves it to a favourites row that stays put in your browser between visits.
Random face copies one at random and scrolls it into view, which is a good way to find something you would never have searched for.
Your last twelve copied faces stay in a “recently copied” strip, so the one you used this morning is one tap away. Paste them wherever you type: Discord, X, Instagram captions, Twitch and gaming chat, group threads, or a display name.
You are welcome to embed this free kaomoji picker on your own website, blog, or classroom page. Copy the code below and paste it into your HTML. Please keep the credit link so others can find the tool.
Kaomoji means “face characters” in Japanese, combining kao (顔, face) and moji (文字, character). It refers to emoticons made entirely from text symbols that form a small face or scene, such as (^_^) for happiness or (╥_╥) for crying. Unlike an emoji, which is a single picture character, a kaomoji is a short string of ordinary characters arranged to look like an expression.
Is it kaomoji or kamoji?
The correct spelling is kaomoji, with an o in the middle, because the word is kao plus moji. Kamoji is a very common misspelling and searching for it will find the same faces. Say it as four syllables, kah-oh-MO-jee, with each vowel sounded separately. In Japanese it is written 顔文字 in kanji or かおもじ in hiragana.
What is the difference between kaomoji and emoji?
Emoji are single picture characters, like a yellow smiling face, drawn as small images that look slightly different on every phone and app. Kaomoji are strings of ordinary text characters, so (^_^) is something you can edit, stretch, or combine with other symbols. The practical difference is consistency: a kaomoji looks the same everywhere you paste it, while the same emoji can change expression between Apple, Android, and Discord.
What is the most popular kaomoji?
The shrug, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, is the most widely used kaomoji outside Japan by a comfortable margin, followed by the table flip (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ and the Lenny face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Inside Japan the everyday winners are much quieter: (^_^), (´・ω・`), and the bowing m(_ _)m used for thanks and apologies. All of them are in the picker above.
What does ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ mean?
The shrug means “who knows”, “not my problem”, or “it is out of my hands”, delivered with a lightness that softens the message. It is built from two macrons for the shoulders, backslashes and underscores for the arms, and the katakana ツ (tsu) for the face, whose curved shape reads as a smirking mouth with two eyes above it. It suits a polite non-answer better than any word does.
How do I type kaomoji on iPhone?
Open Settings, tap General, Keyboard, Keyboards, then Add New Keyboard, choose Japanese and pick Kana. When you next type, hold the globe key at the bottom left and switch to the Japanese keyboard. Tap the kaomoji key on the bottom row, third from the left, and a built-in library of faces appears. Swipe or tap the arrow to browse the full set.
Will kaomoji work on Discord, Instagram and X?
Yes, on all three, and in usernames as well as messages. Kaomoji are plain text, so anywhere that accepts typing accepts them: Discord messages, nicknames and status lines, Instagram captions and bios, posts and display names on X, Twitch chat, WhatsApp, and email subject lines. A few services limit the length of a display name, so a long table flip may be trimmed while a short face like ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ fits.
Why does a kaomoji show as boxes on my phone?
A box, sometimes called a tofu, means your device has the character but no installed font that can draw it. It is a font fallback problem, not a broken copy: the text is intact and will display correctly for someone whose font covers those characters. Faces built from rarer scripts are the usual culprits. If it happens often, pick a simpler face, since (^_^) and (T_T) render everywhere.
Why are kaomoji read upright?
Japanese text input made a wide set of characters easy to reach, so early users could build faces with real eyes and a mouth already facing forward. Western emoticons had only a few keyboard symbols to work with and had to be read sideways. Kaomoji also put the emotion in the eyes rather than the mouth, which is why (^_^) and (T_T) feel so different despite sharing the same brackets.
Are kaomoji the same as Lenny faces?
A Lenny face is one particular kaomoji, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), not a separate category. It is built the same way as any other, with combining characters for the raised brows and a Latin letter for the smirking mouth. Its origin is different, though: it is believed to have started on Finnish imageboards rather than in Japan, then spread back into the wider kaomoji vocabulary.
Are kaomoji still popular today?
Yes. While emoji dominate mainstream messaging, kaomoji remain popular in gaming, anime, and oshi fan communities, and they enjoy steady use worldwide precisely because they feel more expressive and handmade. Faces like the shrug and the table flip have become internet staples far beyond Japan, and their text-only nature keeps them useful anywhere emoji feel too polished.
