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Emoji History: The Missing Years

During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo functions. I bought a coup...

Then I tried typing some messages on the device and as I explored the myriad of keyboard input mechanisms I came across something rather familiar (sorry about the awful photo—it’s the best I could do, honest—the screen is very reflective and the pixels are so far from the backing they cast individual shadows! In the Yakumono typeface, created by Yutaka Satoh(TYPE-LABO), we can clearly see many of the key emoji that would persist throughout the years: smiley faces, food, drink, cigarettes, sweat, umbrella, paperclip, lips, envelope, and most interestingly the (not smiling) pile of poo. Much of this falls in the grey area of happening around the time the internet was taking hold, plus most things about the origin of emoji are in Japanese language, so there are unlikely to be sources Wikipedia would consider verifiable enough.

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