顔文字とは?
Kaomoji (顔文字) — literally "face characters" in Japanese — are emoticons built from Unicode letters, punctuation, brackets and diacritics. Unlike the colourful bitmap emojis on your phone keyboard, a kaomoji is just plain text: the entire face exists between the opening and closing bracket, and every pair of eyes, mouth, blush mark or sweat drop is a real character anyone can copy, paste or type. That is why kaomoji feel so legible across every chat app, forum, game, code comment and terminal — the medium does not need emoji fonts or colour.
Classic Western ASCII emoticons (like :-) or ;-) ) are read sideways; kaomoji are read upright. A face such as (ᵔ◡ᵔ) already shows two eyes and a smile without rotating your head, which is why they spread so quickly from Japanese bulletin boards into chat rooms, Twitter, Discord and Twitch.
顔文字の簡単な歴史
最初に広く認められた顔文字は
(^_^),
attributed to a 1986 post by Yasushi Wakabayashi on the Japanese bulletin board ASCII NET. Western users at the same time were happily typing
:)
sideways — but Japanese keyboards, and Japanese multi-byte encodings like Shift-JIS, gave users an enormous palette of full-width brackets, kana and symbols. Over the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japanese forum culture (2channel and its descendants especially) turned this palette into a folk art: thousands of face variations, each with a subtly different emotion.
1990年代後半には、テーブルをひっくり返す (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ と肩をすくめる ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ had crossed into English-language internet culture. The shrug in particular became so iconic that it was featured as a reaction on Slack, Discord, macOS text replacement and countless meme templates. Today kaomoji coexist with Unicode emojis, but they fill a different niche — ironic, text-first, sometimes ASCII-pure, sometimes absurdly elaborate.
顔文字 vs. 絵文字 vs. エモーティコン
- エモーティコン — いくつかのASCII記号で作られた横向きの顔:
:-),;-P,:<. - 顔文字 — 日本語スタイルの文字を使った縦向きのテキスト顔: (。◕‿◕。), (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻.
- 絵文字 — a picture character encoded in Unicode, rendered as a colour glyph by the operating system: 😀 🎉 🌸.
All three are "pictographic communication", but only emoji require an emoji-aware font. Kaomoji work everywhere text works — including places emoji notoriously break, like terminals, old web forms, LaTeX documents, git commit messages and monospaced code editors.
顔文字の作り方
ほとんどの顔文字はシンプルなパターンに従います:
[left bracket][left cheek/hand][left eye][mouth][right eye][right cheek/hand][right bracket].
Swapping a single component changes the emotion dramatically — the same brackets plus different eyes gives you happy, crying, angry, sleepy or confused. That modularity is exactly why there are so many variations, and why kaomoji lend themselves to being browsed by mood, action or character type.
よく使われる構成要素
- 目:
◕ ◕,•́ •̀,╥ ╥,◉ ◉,ಠ ಠ,⌒ ⌒,T T,> < - 口:
‿,ω,□,皿,▽,益,〰 - 頬 / 赤面:
。,⁎,✿,* - 手 / 腕:
ヽ,ノ,╯,╰,╭,ʕ,ʔ - 涙 / 汗 / エフェクト:
;,T_T,˃̣̣̥,つ,~~,♡,★
Once you know these parts, you can read any kaomoji at a glance and even remix your own. That is the real reward of browsing a kaomoji library: you stop copying and start composing.
なぜ人々は2026年になっても顔文字を使うのか
- クロスプラットフォームの信頼性 — kaomoji render identically on any device with a basic Unicode font, from ancient IRC clients to modern Slack. No missing-glyph box, no platform-specific yellow face.
- トーンと皮肉 — a shrug or a flipped table carries a specific kind of deadpan humour that a full-colour emoji cannot match. Kaomoji are theatrical without being flashy.
- 表現の幅 — there are literally thousands of kaomoji for micro-emotions no single emoji covers: sleepy-but-content, politely panicking, happily nosebleeding, smug bear peeking from a bush, magical-girl-transformation excitement.
- アクセシビリティ — screen readers read each Unicode code point, which means a kaomoji is announced character by character — sometimes lovingly, sometimes hilariously. Emoji are usually announced by one pre-defined name.
- コミュニティのアイデンティティ — kaomoji are a badge of a specific online culture (imageboards, speedrun chats, programmer forums, anime fandom, vtuber chats). Using one is a small cultural handshake.
顔文字の使い方 — クイックガイド
- Click any kaomoji on this site to copy it to your clipboard — no sign-up, no app.
- Paste it anywhere that accepts text: Slack, Discord, Twitter/X, Instagram captions, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, email, Notion, Figma, Obsidian, a Twitch chat, a commit message, even a <code><title></code> tag.
- On mobile, long-press the copied text to paste — some apps need a second tap to flatten formatting.
- In macOS, add your favourites to System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements (e.g. "shr" → ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Windows users can use PowerToys Keyboard Manager or AutoHotKey.
- Avoid double-escaping: if a chat app converts smart quotes or backslashes, the kaomoji can break. Pasting into a code fence (wrap with `backticks`) usually preserves it.
このサイトの顔文字カテゴリー
We group 962 kaomoji into six top-level families so you can find the right face fast:
- Positive 顔文字 — joy かおもじ, love かおもじ, 恥ずかしさ かおもじ, 共感 かおもじ, 笑っている かおもじ, 恥じらい かおもじ, キス かおもじ — smiles, blushes, hearts, bows.
- Negative 顔文字 — 怒り かおもじ, 悲しさ かおもじ, 痛み かおもじ, 恐怖 かおもじ, 不満 かおもじ, 泣いている かおもじ, イライラした かおもじ — tears, rage lines, defensive hands.
- Neutral 顔文字 — 無関心 かおもじ, 混乱 かおもじ, 疑い かおもじ, サプライズ かおもじ, 考え中 かおもじ — flat mouths, ???, side-eye, raised brows.
- Actions 顔文字 — こんにちは かおもじ, ハグしている かおもじ, ウィンク かおもじ, お詫び かおもじ, 執筆 かおもじ, 実行中 かおもじ, 睡眠中 かおもじ, 鼻血 かおもじ, 非表示 かおもじ, シュラッグ かおもじ, テーブルひっくり返し かおもじ, 顔を覆う かおもじ — kaomoji that actually do something.
- Animals 顔文字 — クマ かおもじ, 猫 かおもじ, 犬 かおもじ, うさぎ かおもじ, ブタ かおもじ, 鳥 かおもじ, くも かおもじ, 魚 かおもじ, ハムスター かおもじ, シール かおもじ, snake かおもじ, バタフライ かおもじ, コウモリ かおもじ — the ASCII menagerie.
- その他 顔文字 — 友達 かおもじ, 敵 かおもじ, マジック かおもじ, フード かおもじ, 音楽 かおもじ, ゲーム かおもじ, 顔 かおもじ, スペシャル かおもじ, キラキラ かおもじ, スター かおもじ, ハート&シンボル かおもじ, 花 かおもじ, 天気 かおもじ — special characters that do not fit the other boxes.
Every kaomoji has its own page with copy-paste, a description, related keywords, and a grid of similar kaomoji from the same group, so discovery keeps going.
おそらくすでに知っている有名な顔文字
- ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ — the shrug. A 2010s icon; Slack auto-suggests it; popularised by Kanye West and then by literally everyone.
- (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ — the table flip. One of the most animated kaomoji ever made — peak 2channel energy.
- ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ — くま。Go言語開発者のマスコットであり、ツムツムの美学。
- (。◕‿◕。) — クラシックなキラキラの笑顔。「ありがとう!」や「やった!」のメッセージに最適。
- (ಠ_ಠ) — 「不承認の表情」。2010年代の画像マクロ文化におけるレニー。
- ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) — Lenny Face. Not strictly Japanese-origin, but adopted into the kaomoji family. Use sparingly.
- (*/ω\*) — 照れている / 顔を隠す。アニメ風。
さまざまなプラットフォームでの顔文字
Kaomoji are just Unicode text, so they work everywhere plain text works. A few platform notes:
- Slack / Discord — kaomoji paste fine. Discord strips some diacritics in code blocks; use inline instead. Slack has a built-in shrug command:
/shrug your message. - Twitter / X — full support including combining diacritics. Long kaomoji with many combining marks still count as only a few characters, which is useful for the 280-character limit.
- iOS / macOS — native text replacement lets you type a short code and have it expanded into your favourite kaomoji.
- Windows — Windows 10+ has a built-in kaomoji keyboard at Win + . (period). It ships hundreds of kaomoji out of the box.
- Android — Gboard has a dedicated ASCII tab; Samsung Keyboard exposes kaomoji under the emoji menu.
- Terminals / CLI — any terminal with a font that supports basic katakana and extended Latin will render most kaomoji. Some extremely elaborate kaomoji with stacked combining marks may render raggedly in monospaced fonts.
文化、コミュニティ、そして顔文字の伝承
Kaomoji are a living part of internet folk culture. On the Japanese side: 2channel's ASCII-art boards, Nico Nico Douga comment streams, and the enormous kaomoji dictionaries hosted on personal homepages in the late 2000s. On the Western side: early LiveJournal + DeviantArt communities, the 2010s Tumblr cutesy era, MMO guild chats where kaomoji served as quick emotional reactions, and more recently the vtuber scene, where kaomoji pair naturally with the anime-coded communication style.
Interestingly, some kaomoji have travelled in the other direction: the shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ was popularised in English and is now often found in Japanese chat too. Kaomoji are a two-way bridge between cultures.
顔文字FAQ
顔文字と絵文字は同じものですか?
No. Emoji are single picture characters encoded in the Unicode standard and rendered with colour fonts. Kaomoji are faces built out of several plain text characters — punctuation, brackets, kana, diacritics. Kaomoji do not require an emoji-aware font.
スマートフォンで顔文字をコピーするにはどうすればいいですか?
Tap any kaomoji on this site; it is copied to your clipboard automatically. Then long-press in the target app and choose "Paste". Most kaomoji are short enough that a single tap is all it takes.
一部のアプリで顔文字が変に見えたり、四角く表示されるのはなぜですか?
The app is missing a glyph. Usually this is the Japanese kana (ツ, ω) or a less-common bracket. Updating the OS or switching to a Noto / Arial Unicode MS font fixes almost every case.
Twitter / Xで顔文字を使っても文字数制限に影響しませんか?
Yes. Each Unicode code point counts as one character for Twitter. Combining diacritics are still individual characters, so an elaborate multi-layer kaomoji can eat 20+ characters; classic kaomoji are usually 5–12.
顔文字はスクリーンリーダーに対応していますか?
Screen readers announce each code point, which makes kaomoji verbose but readable. For maximum accessibility, always pair a decorative kaomoji with a short written sentence describing the emotion.
自分で顔文字を作れますか?
Absolutely — kaomoji are open-source by nature. Pick eyes, a mouth, brackets, and optional hands or effects, and assemble. If you want your creation on this site, drop it in a commit message or share it with us.
肩をすくめる顔文字のエスケープシーケンスは何ですか?
標準的な肩をすくめる顔文字は ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. コードやMarkdownファイルに記述する場合は、バックスラッシュをエスケープしてください: ¯\\\\_(ツ)_/¯. ほとんどのチャットアプリでは、バックスラッシュが1つのバージョンが正しく処理されます。
複数形は「kaomoji」ですか、それとも「kaomojis」ですか?
Both are used in English. Purists follow Japanese (no plural -s: "ten kaomoji"), but "kaomojis" is widely understood.