World Emoji Day: If Shigetaka Kurita Did Not Create The First Emoji Who Did?
KEY POINTS
- People across the globe are celebrating the World Emoji Day
- Shigetaka Kurita is known as the father of emoji
- Claims, however, surfaced that a set of emoji was released in 1997 by SoftBank
- This release predates the ones released by DoCoMo in 1999
- The designer of the 90 emojis from SoftBank is still unknown
Happy World Emoji Day!
Thanks to Shigetaka Kurita, the world is celebrating World Emoji Day today. But did he create the world’s first emoji?
Emojis have been included in most of what society now calls “millennial conversation.” Kurita, a Japanese graphic designer, was said to be the father of the world’s first emoji.
Kurita was with NTT DoCoMo, a mobile phone operator company when he designed the emoji back in 1999. Since then, the Japan-based mobile company has been widely credit as the originator of the emoji.
The Man Who Invented Emoji
— Clio's Chronicles (@CliosChronicles) July 17, 2020
Emojis are mostly used as a communication tool for emotions. Over 6 billion emojis are sent daily while 90% of the online community makes use of them.
The first emoji was designed by a Japanese man Shigetaka Kurita, in 1999.#WorldEmojiDay pic.twitter.com/J4LvbdBCit
A blog about the origin of emoji surfaced in March 2019. The said journal weblog claimed the existence of 90 emojis predating the 176 ones released by DoCoMo in 1999.
The write-up revealed that SoftBank, a carrier that partnered with Apple to bring its flagship iPhones to Japan in 2008, released a phone supporting the said 90 emojis in 1997. It further claimed that the most popular emoji, encoded as U=1F4A9 PILE OF POO in the Unicode Standard, originated in the 1997 release.

Whoever designed the emojis back in 1997 is still unknown, according to the blog. Hence, it invoked to set the record straight that unless there was evidence supporting that DoCoMo had an emoji set released before the 1997 release, the original emoji set released in Japan belonged to SoftBank with the designer unknown.
Kurita was born in Gifu Prefecture on May 9, 1972. He was 25 when he created the first set of emojis in one month, rushing to meet a deadline, The Star reported.
The purpose of Kurita’s emoji was to ease the communication on the mobile internet system of NTT DoCoMo, CNN reported. This type of messaging was only budding at that time.
DoCoMo’s email was restricted to 250 characters and Kurita’s emojis were reportedly intended to say more in a limited space. Emoji came from the Japanese words “e” for pictures and “moji” for characters or letters.
Of all the dates, why celebrate July 17 as the World Emoji Day? The significance to the date was not clear but Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia founder saw this date on Apple’s calendar emoji, Telangana Today reported.
Let's celebrate #worldemojiday Springfield Style! What's your favorite Simpmoji? ๐๐ pic.twitter.com/rBKnTKYeat
— World Emoji Day ๐ (@WorldEmojiDay) July 17, 2020
Everything is cake. That's all there is to it ๐ ๐ง ๐ฐ ๐ฅฎ#WorldEmojiDay pic.twitter.com/zDPxnrdyJS
— World Emoji Day ๐ (@WorldEmojiDay) July 17, 2020
๐๐บ๐ฅณ๐๐คฉ๐
— Apple Support (@AppleSupport) July 17, 2020
Happy #WorldEmojiDay from ๐. pic.twitter.com/LA3QqyRLmj
๐โ๏ธ๐ฅณ๐บ๐๐บ๐ฅณโ๏ธ๐
— Google Argentina (@googleargentina) July 17, 2020
๐๐ฅณโ๏ธโจ๐โจโ๏ธ๐ฅณ๐
๐๐บโจโ๏ธ๐โ๏ธโจ๐บ๐
๐#DรญaMundialDelEmoji๐
๐๐บโจโ๏ธ๐โ๏ธโจ๐บ๐
๐๐ฅณโ๏ธโจ๐โจโ๏ธ๐ฅณ๐
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Se celebra este dรญa por la fecha que figura en el emoji del calendario. ๐
ยฟCuรกl es el que mรกs usas? โ๏ธ๐ฌ
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