emoji NOUN (plural same or emojis)
A small digital image or icon used toexpress an idea, emotion, etc., in electronic communication:
'emoji liven up your text messages with tiny smiley faces’ Origin
1990s: Japanese, from e 'picture' + moji'letter, character'.
(Oxford Dictionaries Online)
The prototypes of emojis were born in Japan at the end of the 20th century. The man who created these images in the first place was Shigetaka Kurita, who was involved in the launch of the world's first mobile internet platform.
This mobile internet platform created in Japan in 1999 was called 'i-mode'. Kurita was working at NTT docomo, one of the Japan's largest mobile service providers as the member of the i-mode project team. The goal of the i-mode service was to provide internet service on 'feature phones', which were a type of cellphones that were used widely in Japan. A feature phone in 1999 had a very small monochrome LCD screen which could only fit in 48 letters.
Kurita says he thought it would be difficult to deliver enough information on feature phones due to the limited screen space without emoji. “Prior to our i-mode, AT&T was already offering information services for cell phone users. Everything was shown by text. Even the weather forecast was displayed as 'fine'. When I saw it, I found it difficult to understand”, recalls Kurita. Japanese TV weather forecasts have always included pictures or symbols to describe the weather—for example, a picture of sun meant 'sunny'. Being so familiar with this culture, Kurita thought "I'd rather see a picture of the sun, instead of a text saying 'fine'. "
Kurita also adds his experience working at NTT docomo’s retailer. “I was selling pagers, and using hearts in the messages were very popular among pager users. Therefore, I started thinking that having pictures that can show expressions like hearts would be important for i-mode too. I passionately proposed to add emoji to i-mode. My proposal was accepted quite easily since there weren’t many planners back then.”
However, there wasn’t very much time until the release of i-mode. In just one month, Kurita had to come up with the world’s first 180 emoji. In the first 10 days of his planning he spent his time in the city and watched people to see how they were expressing themselves. He also paid attention to things in the city to make a list of things he thought would be better understood if they had pictures or symbols.
“At first, I came up with 5 or 6 different faces such as the smiley face. They needed to be dotted to be digitized in the end. I draw pictures and communicated with designers a lot so they would have a clear idea what the final digitized image should look like.”
Kurita says that in order to gain as many users as possible, he always attempted to achieve clarity and universality when he visualized emoji. “I was working with the sense of creating a new alphabet. It was an attempt to create texts rather than a sense of making pictures.”
There were mainly two references that Kurita used as idea sources in order to invent emoji. One was Manga. In Manga, there are unique techniques using symbolic representations called 'manpu'. For example, by drawing a water drop on a face, it represents 'nervousness' or 'confusion'. By drawing a light bulb above a character’s head, it expresses 'flash of an idea'. Kurita picked up manpu from Manga. Those manpu he selected were familiar to those who live in Japan and would become i-mode users.
The other source was the pictogram. A pictogram is a sign displayed to give information or alert the public. Well known pictograms are signs outside bathroom symbolizing the features of a man and woman. Others are the signs for emergency exits showing a picture of person running to escape. According to Kurita the pictogram became widespread during the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Art critic Masaru Katsumi was the chairman of a committee specializing in designs for ’64 Olympics. At that time in Japan, signs to show directions and positions of facilities were indicated only by Japanese language.
There was a discussion considering how to make these signs understandable for foreigners who do not understand Japanese. Katsumi proposed using pictures for signs. In response to this proposal, many pictograms were created by young designers under Katsumi's supervision. Pictograms have been used for the Olympic games ever since.
Since emoji were first created in Japan, Japanese tend to see a deep affinity between emoji and the Japanese culture. However, Mr. Kurita thinks that emoji has a deeper relation with the internet. “When you communicate on the internet, it is very convenient to have emoji, because it’s hard to express emotions only with text. If you look at history, after handwritten letters, there came the telephone. Then, electronic messaging emerged. There was always a demand for something that can express emotions. However, in Japan, we already had Kanji which are ideograms from the first place. So, I guess we had a base to begin with.”
In Japan, emoji have been widely used since i-mode was created around the year 2000. About 10 years after that, it has spread rapidly overseas with of the expansion of smartphones, such as iPhones. Kurita says the reason for this time lag is simply due to the differences in the development of hardware.
“Emoji were not included in overseas versions of what is called the feature phone in Japan. I suppose it was because there were no devices compatible with emoji. Therefore, after smartphones appeared, people overseas finally started using emoji. When Japanese people first started using emoji by i-mode around the year 2000, many of them felt the service was very new. I guess people overseas have been experiencing similar excitements in the past few years. I wish everyone around the world would enjoy using emoji!”