Kaomoji — 500+ Japanese Text Faces to Copy and Paste

Kaomoji copy and paste works because kaomoji are characters, not images. 顔文字 — kao (face) plus moji (character) — emerged on Japanese networks in the mid-1980s and developed separately from the Western sideways emoticon, because Japanese text systems supported a far larger character set from the start.

Why kaomoji are read upright

Western emoticons rotate out of necessity. With only ASCII available, `:` and `)` are the closest things to an eye and a mouth, and they only work sideways.

Japanese users had shapes that already looked like eyes, so there was nothing to rotate. That single difference is why kaomoji have so much more range: the eyes, mouth, frame, arms and decoration all vary independently, which is thousands of expressions rather than a few dozen.

The eyes carry the emotion

This is the fastest way to find what you want. In a kaomoji the mouth is often a small connector while the eyes do the work.

(◕‿◕) is friendly. (ಠ‿ಠ) is disapproving. (⊙‿⊙) is surprised. (╥‿╥) is tearful. Identical mouths, four different faces. Scan the eye shape first and you will find the right one much faster than reading whole faces.

Where kaomoji work

They render identically in LINE, Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, X and most game chats, because they are text rather than artwork. Display names generally accept them; strict @username fields limited to letters and numbers do not.

One caution specific to this style: kaomoji built from rare scripts can show as empty boxes on older Android devices, and any face containing a backslash loses it to markdown on Reddit and Discord unless you double it. Every face on this page is restricted to characters with broad support for that reason.

Browse by style

For the Japanese-language edition with 41 mood pages, see かわいい顔文字. For the searchable version, the kaomoji keyboard filters 220 by mood as you type. Japanese emoticons covers the tradition in more depth, emoticons covers the sideways Western kind, and the generator builds one from parts.