The Origin of Emojis: The Story of Shigetaka Kurita and the 176 Symbols That Are Museum Art

You use dozens a day. The 😂, the ❤️, maybe even the 💩. They've become second nature, a quick and universal way to add tone, humor, and emotion to our digital conversations. But have you ever wondered where they came from? The answer isn't in Silicon Valley, but in Japan, in 1999, and it's a fascinating tale of art, business, and design under pressure. It's the story of how a young designer, Shigetaka Kurita, was tasked with encapsulating human emotion in tiny 12x12 pixel icons for the telecommunications company NTT DoCoMo, giving birth to a language that would change the world.

In the late 1990s, digital communication was an emotional minefield. Text messages and early emails were cold, functional, and terribly prone to misunderstandings. A simple "Okay" could be interpreted as either a constructive agreement or a passive-aggressive response. The nuance of body language and tone of voice were missing.

NTT DoCoMo, one of Japan's leading telecommunications companies, found this out the hard way. In the mid-90s, they launched a pager aimed at teenagers that included a revolutionary innovation: the option to send a single pictogram, a red heart ❤️. The device was a massive success. However, shortly after, the company launched a new model for the business market, eliminating the heart because it was considered unprofessional. The reaction was immediate and disastrous: sales plummeted, and customers fled to competitors who did offer symbols. The lesson was clear and forceful: emotion wasn't an extra; it was a fundamental need for human communication—and also big business.

With this lesson learned, NTT DoCoMo was preparing to launch its ambitious mobile internet service, "i-mode." The team, which included a young Shigetaka Kurita, knew they needed a visual system to avoid the mistakes of the past. Kurita was given a monumental task: to design a complete set of pictograms that could convey information and emotion quickly and clearly.

The challenge was immense, not only conceptually but also technically. Each symbol had to be designed within a tiny 12x12 pixel grid, a canvas of just 144 points, to create a recognizable and expressive icon. This severe technical limitation was not an obstacle, but rather a catalyst for the design's genius. It forced Kurita to search for the essence of each idea, to create minimalist yet universally understandable symbols.

To do this, Kurita drew inspiration from various visual sources that were already part of Japanese culture.

Manga: Japanese comics use a rich language of visual symbols called manpu to express emotions. A bead of sweat on the face for nervousness, bulging veins for anger, or a light bulb for an idea are examples Kurita adapted.

Traffic signs and weather pictograms: These are icons designed to communicate complex information at a glance, a fundamental principle for a mobile phone interface.

Chinese characters (Kanji): The Japanese writing system uses characters that represent complete ideas, demonstrating the power of a single symbol to convey profound meaning.

The result of this work was a set of 176 emojis. The word "emoji" is a contraction of the Japanese words "e" (絵, "image") and "moji" (文字, "character"). Its striking similarity to the English words "emotion" and "emoticon" is a happy coincidence that undoubtedly contributed to its global popularity.

This original set included not only the five basic facial expressions (happy, sad, angry, disappointed, and dizzy), but also a wide range of objects, weather symbols, moon phases, sports, and abstract concepts. These icons not only allowed users to express feelings, but also allowed the company itself to communicate service information such as the weather forecast or the location of an ATM.

The success of emojis was immediate and transformative. They became an essential part of digital communication, reintroducing the "body language" that had been lost in plain text. They enabled more nuanced, faster, and, above all, more human communication.

The impact of this innovation was so profound that, in 2016, New York's prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) acquired Kurita's original set of 176 emojis for its permanent collection. MoMA recognized them not just as a technological curiosity, but as a seminal work of design that altered human behavior on a global scale. Paola Antonelli, MoMA's senior curator of architecture and design, explained the decision by stating that the museum seeks to document the design of our time and that, simply, "we cannot live without emojis today."

This recognition solidified the idea that innovation isn't always born in a Silicon Valley garage. Sometimes, it emerges from the need to solve a very human problem, under the strictest technical constraints. The history of the emoji demonstrates that a digital and commercial design object can transcend its original purpose to become a historically significant cultural artifact, forever changing the way we communicate.

Interestingly, the famous smiling poop emoji wasn't part of Kurita's original set. Its origins are also Japanese, but it's linked to a cultural fascination with scatological humor. The popularity of the character Arale in the manga Dr. Slump, who interacted with anthropomorphic feces, normalized the idea.

Additionally, in Japan, there's a pun on unko (poop) and un (luck), which led to the creation of lucky charms in the form of "golden poop" (Kin no Unko). When Google decided to incorporate emojis into Gmail in 2007 to expand into Asia, the Japanese team insisted on including the poop emoji due to its cultural significance. Initially, Google designed a more realistic version, faceless and with flies buzzing around it. It was Apple who, when incorporating it into iOS, gave it its iconic, friendly smile, transforming it into the global phenomenon it is today.

From their humble origins on a 144-pixel grid, emojis have evolved into a living, universal language. Their meaning is often shaped more by the billions of users than by their original creators. The closed fist ✊, which Kurita designed for the game of rock, paper, scissors, is today a global symbol of solidarity. Every time we send an emoji, we are participating in the evolution of this fascinating language—proof that a small image, born out of a commercial need, can truly change the world.

What's your most used emoji, and why do you think it's become so popular? Tell us in the comments!