# EMOJI

> Emoji are pictographic Unicode characters originating from 1997 Japanese mobile culture, standardized globally in 2010, and now comprising nearly 4,000 officially recognized symbols for digital communication.

Emoji are graphical pictograms used inline with text in digital messages, depicting everything from facial expressions to animals, food, and symbols. Originating from Japanese mobile phone culture in the late 1990s, emoji went global after Apple included them in iOS and the Unicode Consortium standardized them in 2010. With nearly 4,000 officially recognized characters as of 2023, emoji changed the way people communicate online, spawning debates over diversity, cultural meaning, and even which way a cheeseburger should be stacked.

## Origin
The history of emoji stretches back further than most people realize. The earliest known set of emoji-like characters appeared on the Sharp PA-8500 PDA device, released in Japan in October 1988, featuring over 100 pictographic symbols that could be placed inline with text[7]. This discovery was made public in March 2024 by games developer and blogger Matt Sephton[7].

The first emoji set on a mobile phone came from SoftBank (then called J-Phone) on November 1, 1997, with the SkyWalker DP-211SW handset[3]. This set included 90 distinct 12x12 pixel monochrome characters, among them the now-iconic pile of poo emoji[7]. The phone sold poorly, so the set went largely unnoticed at the time[5].

The more famous origin story belongs to Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese mobile software engineer who designed 176 emoji for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet platform, launched in February 1999[8]. Kurita's challenge was to enable expressive communication within i-mode's 250-character message limit[7]. He drew inspiration from manga iconography, Chinese characters, and street sign pictograms[5]. Kurita himself acknowledged that DoCoMo's set wasn't the first, tweeting in January 2019: "The first emoji use in mobile devices in Japan was a pager, but in mobile phones DoCoMo wasn't the first, I think it was J-PHONE DP-211SW" (translated from Japanese)[3]. His original 176 emoji are now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City[9].

- **Platform:** Japanese mobile phones (SoftBank / NTT DoCoMo i-mode)
- **Creator:** SoftBank (earliest known mobile phone emoji set, 1997), Shigetaka Kurita (DoCoMo i-mode set, 1999)
- **Date:** 1997 (earliest mobile phone set), 1999 (widely recognized origin)

## Overview
Emoji are small digital images or icons used to express ideas, emotions, or objects within text-based messages[5]. Unlike their predecessor, the text-based emoticon (think:-) or;-)), emoji are full-color pictograms that can be inserted from a dedicated keyboard on smartphones and computers. The word "emoji" comes from the Japanese words *e* (絵, "picture") and *moji* (文字, "character"), and the resemblance to the English word "emoticon" is purely coincidental[5].

Each emoji is standardized by the Unicode Consortium, meaning platforms like Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft each design their own visual interpretation of the same character[8]. This is why the same emoji can look noticeably different depending on whether you're on an iPhone or an Android phone[9]. As of Unicode 15.1 in June 2023, there are 3,782 officially approved emoji characters[9].

## How It Spread
Emoji stayed largely confined to Japan through the 2000s, as competing carriers DoCoMo, SoftBank, and au by KDDI each maintained incompatible emoji sets[5]. The i-mode platform hit 40 million subscribers by 2004, making emoji a fixture of Japanese mobile culture[4].

The international breakout began in November 2008 when Apple's iPhone firmware 2.2 shipped with a hidden emoji keyboard intended only for SoftBank users in Japan[4]. Five days after the release, Irish iPhone blogger Simon Ng published a guide showing how to enable emoji on jailbroken iPhones worldwide[1]. By December 2008, Ng posted a method for non-jailbroken phones as well[2]. Numerous emoji-unlocking apps flooded the iTunes Store, prompting Apple to issue a store-wide takedown order in early 2009, citing sandbox policy violations and possible licensing issues[12].

In 2006, Google had started converting Japanese emoji to Unicode private-use codes internally[16]. A formal proposal to encode emoji in Unicode was approved in May 2007[16]. The first Unicode characters explicitly intended as emoji were added to Unicode 5.2 in 2009[7]. The big standardization push came with Unicode 6.0 in 2010, which added 994 emoji characters including emotions, families, animals, food, and country flags[7].

Apple's iOS 5 in September 2011 made the emoji keyboard a built-in, freely accessible feature for all iPhone users, kicking off mainstream worldwide adoption[4]. Android added full emoji keyboard support in 2013[8]. By July 2013, the EmojiTracker tool launched to monitor real-time emoji usage on Twitter[4].

Meanwhile, emoji creativity flourished on Tumblr and BuzzFeed. Blogs like Emoji Song Lyrics and Emojiplot translated songs and movie plots into emoji strings[10][11]. In 2009, Fred Benenson launched Emoji Dick, a crowdsourced project that enlisted over 800 people through Mechanical Turk to translate Herman Melville's *Moby Dick* entirely into emoji[7].

## How to Use
Emoji are a communication tool built into every modern device, accessed through a dedicated keyboard (often triggered by a globe or smiley icon on phones, or keyboard shortcuts on desktop).
1. Use emoji as emotional shorthand: add reaction faces after messages to convey tone (e.g., laughing, crying, heart)
2. Layer subtext with commonly repurposed emoji that carry meanings beyond their literal design
3. String together repeated emoji for emphasis or decoration to hype something up
4. Send single emoji as complete responses as reaction shorthand in conversations
5. Try emoji-only storytelling: summarize movies or tell stories using only emoji sequences as a social media game

## Cultural Impact
Emoji crossed from digital tool to mainstream cultural force in the mid-2010s. The White House included emoji in an economic report about millennials[8]. The "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji becoming Oxford's Word of the Year in 2015 marked the first time a pictograph beat out actual words for the honor, topping contenders like "lumbersexual" and "on fleek"[9].

Kurita's original 176 emoji set was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection[9]. Fred Benenson's *Emoji Dick*, the crowdsourced emoji translation of *Moby Dick* that took over 3.7 million seconds of human labor to create, was accepted into the Library of Congress[7].

The non-profit Innocence en Danger created a disturbing ad campaign morphing real human faces into emoji to raise awareness about online predators targeting children[14]. The images, showing bald men grinning with emoji-like features, went viral and became one of the more memorable stranger danger campaigns online[14].

Hershey's 2019 limited-edition emoji chocolate bar marked the first design change to the company's iconic milk chocolate bar in its 125-year history[20]. The EMOJI.com domain registrations trace back to April 2001 when ICANN made symbol domains available, though these symbols only became recognized as emoji after Unicode adopted them years later[7].

## Fun Facts
- The word "emoji" appearing in the 1997 J-Phone manual is the earliest confirmed use of the term to describe these characters[3]
- The 😂 emoji consistently accounts for 5-6% of all emoji usage globally, making it the single most-used character by a wide margin[9]
- Apple's emoji designs were originally created to be compatible with SoftBank's 1997 set because iPhone launched as a SoftBank exclusive in Japan[7]
- The peach emoji's association with buttocks was so strong that Apple reversed a redesign specifically to preserve the suggestive shape[21]
- The total emoji count grew from 176 in 1999 to 3,782 in 2023, a roughly 21x increase[9]

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Emoji?
Emoji are small digital pictograms used inline with text to convey emotions, objects, or ideas in electronic messages[5]. They originated in Japan and are now standardized by the Unicode Consortium for use across all platforms.

### Where did Emoji come from?
The earliest known emoji set appeared on the Sharp PA-8500 PDA in Japan in 1988[7]. The first mobile phone emoji set came from SoftBank (then J-Phone) in 1997[3], and the most influential early set was Shigetaka Kurita's 176-character collection for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode platform in 1999[8].

### What does Emoji mean?
The word comes from the Japanese *e* (絵, "picture") and *moji* (文字, "character"), literally meaning "pictograph"[5]. Its resemblance to the English word "emoticon" is a coincidence.

### How do you use Emoji?
Access the emoji keyboard on your phone or computer (usually via a globe or smiley icon) and tap to insert characters inline with your text. They're commonly used for emotional shorthand, emphasis, humor, or entire emoji-only messages[8].

### Is Emoji still popular?
As of Unicode 15.1 in June 2023, there are 3,782 approved emoji characters, and new ones are added regularly[9]. The 😂 emoji alone accounts for 5-6% of all global emoji usage[9].

### Who invented Emoji?
While Shigetaka Kurita is most commonly credited for his 1999 DoCoMo set, research has shown that SoftBank's 1997 mobile phone set predates his work[3]. Even earlier emoji-like characters were found on a 1988 Sharp PDA[7].

### When did Emoji come to the iPhone?
Apple included a hidden emoji keyboard in iPhone firmware 2.2 in November 2008, intended only for Japanese SoftBank users[4]. It was made freely available to all users worldwide with iOS 5 in September 2011[4].

### Why did Apple remove emoji apps from the App Store?
In February 2009, Apple issued a takedown order for apps that existed solely to enable the hidden emoji keyboard, citing violations of sandbox policy and possible licensing issues with the emoji images[12].

### When were emoji skin tones added?
A formal Unicode proposal for skin tone diversity was created in December 2014, and Apple shipped the first implementation in April 2015[4]. The standard was formally adopted in November 2015[4].

### What was the peach emoji controversy?
In late 2016, Apple's iOS 10.2 beta redesigned the peach emoji to look less like a pair of buttocks, just a regular piece of fruit[23]. The backlash was immediate, and Apple ultimately kept the original suggestive shape[21].

### What was the burger emoji debate?
In March 2017, a Twitter user pointed out that Samsung and Facebook placed the cheese underneath the lettuce in their cheeseburger emoji, sparking a viral discussion about emoji design consistency[4].

### How many emoji exist?
As of Unicode 15.1 (June 2023), there are 3,782 officially approved emoji characters, up from the original 176 in 1999[9].

### What was the first emoji to win Word of the Year?
In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named 😂 (Face with Tears of Joy) its Word of the Year, the first time a pictograph received the award[9].

## References
1. [How to Enable Emoji Icons on iPhone 2.2 | Simon Blog](<https://web.archive.org/web/20090302041015/http://www.simonblog.com/2008/11/26/how-to-enable-emoji-icons-on-iphone-22/>)
2. [Enable Emoji Icon on iPhone 2.2 without Jailbreak | Simon Blog](<https://web.archive.org/web/20090123154957/http://www.simonblog.com/2008/12/11/enable-emoji-icon-on-iphone-22-without-jailbreak/>)
3. [Major Moments In Emoji History: 1995* to 2025](<https://blog.emojipedia.org/major-moments-in-emoji-history-1995-to-2025/>)
4. [Emoji - Know Your Meme](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/emoji>)
5. [Emoji](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji>)
6. [Emoji - Urban Dictionary](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Emoji>)
7. [Urban Dictionary: emoji](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=emoji>)
8. [Emoji Timeline - An overview of the history of emojis](<https://emojitimeline.com/>)
9. [The history of emoji](<https://www.techtarget.com/WhatIs/feature/The-history-of-emoji>)
10. [Emoji History: Origins, Fun Facts & Most Popular Icons – We Blog We Vlog](<https://weblogwevlog.com/emoji-history/>)
11. [iPhone Emoji Song Lyrics](<https://emojilyrics.tumblr.com/>)
12. [Les Miserables, In Emoticons - Autocowrecks - Funny Collection of FAIL Autocorrects , autocorrect fail](<https://cheezburger.com/6938439936>)
13. [23 Famous Movies And Songs Reenacted In Emojis](<https://www.buzzfeed.com/kdries/23-famous-movies-and-songs-reenacted-in-emojis-4fsn>)
14. [Apple issues App Store-wide Emoji take-down order - Ars Technica](<https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/02/apple-issues-store-wide-emoji-take-down-order/>)
15. [Emojiplot](<https://emojiplot.tumblr.com/>)
16. [Emoji Songs](<https://web.archive.org/web/20130421222002/http://emojisinging.tumblr.com/>)
17. [InterNIC | Whois](<https://reports.internic.net/cgi/whois?whois_nic=emojitracker.com&type=domain>)
18. [WARNING: Real Life Emojis Might Trigger Your Gag Reflex](<https://www.bustle.com/articles/12884-warning-real-life-emojis-might-trigger-your-gag-reflex>)
19. [Viral – UPROXX](<https://uproxx.com/viral/can-you-identify-these-8-movies-by-their-emoji-plots/>)
20. [UTS #51: Unicode Emoji](<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-1-archive.html#Diversity>)
21. [iOS 10.2 Emoji First Look: Shrug, Fingers Crossed, Face Palm](<https://blog.emojipedia.org/ios-10-2-emoji-first-look-shrug-fingers-crossed-face-palm/>)
22. [UTS #51: Unicode Emoji](<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/>)
23. [Innocence en Danger](<https://innocenceendanger.org/>)
24. [iDiversicons Give Us the Emoji Diversity We Need (Finally!)](<https://www.bustle.com/articles/32687-idiversicons-give-us-the-emoji-diversity-we-need-finally>)
25. [#BlackEmojis - Vine](<https://web.archive.org/web/20170117184642/https://vine.co/tags/BlackEmojis/>)
26. [Apple continues focus on inclusivity with 300 new, diverse emoji in iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 | iMore](<https://www.imore.com/apple-continues-focus-inclusivity-ios-83-and-300-new-emoji>)
27. [Google is adding 53 gender-fluid emoji to Android Q | The Verge](<https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538001/google-android-q-gender-fluid-emoji-yellow-diversity-inclusivity>)
28. [Apple’s peach-butt emoji is now just a peach.](<https://slate.com/technology/2016/11/apples-peach-butt-emoji-is-now-just-a-peach.html>)
29. [Hershey’s to Launch Limited-Edition Chocolate Bar Featuring](<https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/05/14/1823727/0/en/Hershey-s-to-Launch-Limited-Edition-Chocolate-Bar-Featuring-Emojis.html>)
30. [Google reveals 53 gender-fluid emojis – New York Daily News](<https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-google-reveals-gender-fluid-emoji-20190509-xpyfqi5hzjbwnhb7bemp44v6lq-story.html>)
31. [🍑 Peach Emoji | Meaning, Copy And Paste](<https://emojipedia.org/peach/>)
32. [Home](<https://jezebel.com/new-diverse-emojis-are-pretty-cool-1609001962>)
33. [Google brings nonbinary emoji to Android Q - CNET](<https://www.cnet.com/news/google-brings-nonbinary-emoji-to-android-q/>)
34. [New iOS 10.2 Emoji Peach Emoji Doesn't Look Like a Butt](<https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/11/new-ios-10-2-emoji-peach-emoji-doesnt-look-like-a-butt.html>)
35. [The Peach Emoji Doesn't Look Like A Butt Anymore And People Are Devastated](<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/juliareinstein/rip-peach-emoji#.nxrpNzmqA>)

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