Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji

by Keith Houston

A vibrant exploration of the world’s newest language—where it came from, how it works, and where it’s going.


We are surrounded by emoji. They appear in politics, movies, drug deals, our sex lives, and more. But emoji’s impact has never been explored in full. In this rollicking tech and pop culture history, Keith Houston follows emoji from its birth in 1990s Japan, traces its Western explosion in the 2000s, and considers emoji’s ever-expanding lexicon. Named for the world’s most popular pictogram, Face with Tears of Joy tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Technology, Linguistics, Language, Pop Culture, Audiobook

352 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 1, 2025

About the author

Keith Houston is the author of Shady Characters, The Book, Empire of the Sum and Face with Tears of Joy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Lapham's Quarterly, BBC Culture, and on Time.com. He lives in Linlithgow, Scotland, with his family.

Reviews

[Sam Orenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfectly paced history of the emoji with plenty of detail. answers every question you have about emoji (is emoji language? who decides new emoji? where did emoji come from?). fast and easy read with lots of fun facts that your friends may or may not enjoy.

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keith Houston is a Scottish writer who's published several nonfiction books on esoteric aspects of numbers and punctuation (see Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks and Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator); his latest addition to this niche collection is 2025's deep dive into the history of emoji, Faces with Tears of Joy.

This was a fun, very well-researched book. I read the Ebook, where thankfully almost all the emoji therein were rendered appropriately by my Kindle app -- though tragically none of my highlights crossed over into my linked Goodreads account. As I suspected, emojis have been around for a lot longer than this century, and while the first example of emoji in a digital format is hard to definitively pin down (there were many examples in Japan dating back to the 1970s and 1980s), it was interesting to learn about all the iterations of emoji, their requirements for interoperability (being rendered similarly regardless of device/operating system), as well as the governing standard that still regulates them, Unicode. As of September 2025 when I'm writing this review, the most recent emoji update is Unicode version 17.0. Personally, I'm still partial to the pre-smartphone era emoticons of my teen years rendered by keyboard strokes, like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯-- to me, it has a charm that Unicode version, U+1F937, lacks.

Now I'm just waiting on the related book (though it may already exist, or maybe Houston's working on it now!) on the etiology and cross-cultural significance of digital textspeak ;).

Further reading:
The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream by Amy Webb

My statistics:
Book 290 for 2025
Book 2216 cumulatively
My statistics:
Book for 2025
Book cumulatively

[Alex Bielovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this on my Kindle (monochrome dot-pixels and all) felt especially appropriate. A really comprehensive dive into a design and language culture we all participate in everyday, and often take for granted. As a designer who’s designed sets of icons and symbols, I have a special appreciation for these little things. 🔎

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was interesting, although it got a bit technical for my ability to comprehend (which is probably predictable). I learned a lot about the history and use of emoji. I had no idea that Kim Kardashian and other famous people sold packages of their likenesses as emojis (clear late stage capitalism at work). I was also reminded of the absolutely absurd "Crooked Hillary" BS that the current thief in the White House spouted constantly 10 years ago. What a little crybaby to exclude Jack for not going along with his sick plan.

[Briann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Face with Tears of Joy opened with a messy and confusing Chapter 1. This chapter did not go in chronological order. Rather, the author kept skipping around from different years and companies. While the book had many interesting points, it overall read as very dull and boring. It was not as engaging as I would have liked.

[Kendell Timmers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Single-sitting read that is fun and informative!

[Tetiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was interesting 🙂 got some insights about how Unicode works, how those people handle emoji. Also we learn a lot about emoji history, how they evolved, and how people use them. 🙃

[Kameko Leung · Rating 3 out of 5]

I now know more about emoji than anyone not writing a research paper on them ever should. Useful for historical context? Yes. Well written? Yes. Worthwhile read for anyone who doesn’t have an academic or obsessive interest in this topic? Definitely no.

[Fanchen Bao · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a delightful quick read of the emoji's history.

One of the most fascinating aspects is that emoji's success is heavily dependent on the Unicode Consortium, which holds absolute authority on emoji and serves more or less as a benevolent dictator. Well, technically, it is an oligarchy. The decisions are made by a handful of unelected people (most of them paid their way in) after debate, negotiation, compromise, and balance of the ever swinging public opinion.

Without a doubt, had emoji not been controlled by the Consortium or had the idea of full customization been adopted, emoji would probably have turned into a cesspool -- it is simply impossible to make everybody happen everywhere all the time. Someone has to put the foot down; someone has to be the adult in the room, setting the rules and standards so that the rest of us can actually have some fun, if not too much fun. That someone is the Consortium, the oligarchy.

So thus I wonder, is it human nature that we can only enjoy good things if an iron fist decides what is permissible and what is not? Is this why religion exists, so that we can have an omnipotent being or karma ruling us over? Is this why authoritarianism is such a magnet that whenever a person has a lapse in judgement, they get sucked into the fantasy of being told what to do? The history of emoji itself might be a lighthearted journey of how those endearing symbols come into being, but deeply, I think, it paints a vivid picture of one aspect of human nature.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded to 4 stars - Proof positive that what I don't know about pop culture in general, and emojis specifically, could fill a book! I learned so much, and yet so little from this book. For example, the first known piece of "typewriter art" which might have been the precursor to emojis was an image of a butterfly created in 1898 by a secretary. The first actual emoji was the smiley face, and many icons created for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics are still in use today and translated to emojis. So much historical background, including academic studies are included in this book. For example, I didn't know that emojis are regulated by the Unicode Consortium, and that the first several annual updates had to do with universalizing them with skin color and gender options. Also, emojis often mean one thing in one culture and an entirely different thing in another culture (thumbs up and okay emojis come to mind). I can't begin to cover all the things I learned from this book. But one thing that I still didn't learn is how to create them, and what most of them mean. However, they did provide a resource for that which is emojipedia.org - heading there now.

[Bryan Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always appreciate a nonfiction book that's not longer than it needs to be. This is a concise, easy read, no small feat when the author needs to explain things such as the creation and functioning of Unicode in order to tell his story. "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Emojis But Were Too Lazy To Google" would have been an unwieldy title, but that's what this book is. From their (disputed) origins on various Japanese operating platforms, to the creation of Unicode to make them translatable across platforms, to the struggle for equality and inclusion among their lexicon, to their monetization and overuse in popular culture, to a proper contextualizing of emojis as a language (with historical analogies from hieroglyphs onwards) it's a comprehensive guide.

A lot of topics in this book feel like things we are subconsciously aware of simply by being alive at this particular point in history, yet it was still enjoyable to read about them all in one place, and to realize just how not insignificant these silly little symbols are in the modern world.

Here's where I'd put a sequence of emojis to summarize my review, but I'm doing this on a laptop and that's not an option.

[Jonathan Dunkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a middle-aged curmudgeon and a technocynic, receiving a copy of this book felt a little bit as if it were a gag gift. Why would I, a user of rolltop desks and postcards, possibly want to read about emojis?

Taken by the design and construction of the book - a really beautiful book published by W.W. Norton with tons of color via the numerous emojis and pictures depicted, lovely smiley-face yellow page numbers, high-quality paper, and an excellent choice of font (whatever it is) - I started reading.

The author, Keith Houston, took over from there. He details the history of emojis, how new ones come about, the societal impact of them, and more. Endnotes abound along with some asides from Houston in the form of footnotes. I found it incredibly interesting, despite detesting the very existence of emoji. I give it a thumbs up emoji and a smiley-face.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the author of The Emoji Haggadah, this is required reading for me - and I'm thrilled I did read it!

Houston gives an excellent history, leaving (almost) no stones unturned. Several revelations abound, including the emoji-on-your-phone process, and its evolution and progress. Most revealing is that there's nothing new under the sun. Emojis are older than you think, in the past and in the modern age. The details are fascinating.

As for my "almost" comment above, well, the author really does cover everything, except for one thing: my book. Still the only book ever fully written using an extant emoji set. I'm taking off a whole star just for that. Once my book appears in the emoji timeline at the end of the book, I'll be happy to add the star.

Let's make a deal.

[Zander Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

😻🔥💩I didn’t expect such a thought-provoking history behind these little guys we use every day. Not only are emoji ingrained in our language, they have to represent our hair textures, skin tones, occupations, and sexual orientations. Apparently, it’s incredibly difficult to design a system capable of representing everyone on earth with a limited set of characters, and it’s still not perfect after years of revision.

My favorite fact from this book is that The Emoji Movie was the first film to be shown publicly in Saudi Arabia after a 35-year ban on cinemas.

[Alan Zhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid read; I wished it was a tad bit more technical, but I suppose that I am in a niche audience here. I think it's interesting to consider the portions of human communication that are in-band (i.e. speech, language) and out-of-band (body language, tone, etc.) and how emoji straddles that boundary, and I think it's also a fascinating case study of how we codify the behavior of our society into formalisms and standards...

Nothing spectacular, but worth a go if you like Unicode.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was really well done. Parts were dry, others laugh-out-loud funny, others reflective. He covered a lot of ground, and while I'm not going to remember the names of specific organizations involved in proposing new emoji, I appreciate how well the author was able to move between technical topics, sociopolitical issues, and linguistics.

[Caleb Deck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fairly decent, though missing some of the hooks I hoped for. I heard Houston on a podcast discussing some of the topics and more fun anecdotes about emoji (an emoji response to a text is a legally binding document?!) but this was a bit more technical. Still plenty of interesting facts and a great overview of the changing text, but it never quite captured me the way I expected it to.

[Katrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't recall where I picked up the recommendation for this book but I enjoyed the insight into emoji. Probably a 3.5 stars. The narrative flows well and I appreciate the history around emoji. I thought after reading this I would look deeper at my emoji use but alas that does not seem to be the case.

[Stanislav Utikeev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Это симпатичная и довольно полная справка об истории эмодзи, но местами показалось скомканно в плане выводов. Также, конечно, автор слишком бодро вооружился тезаурусом для такого публицистического текста — "uncovering previously unknown proclivities and peccadilloes" про исследование, раскрывающее в каких странах какие эмодзи преобладают, это слегка комично что ли.

[Mom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat interesting history of emojis. Felt like the book was written for poeple with a more technical interest in how it all works. Amazing how recently emojis came into popular use, as it feels like they've been around forever. I was disappointed that the book didn't give a list of the more popular emojis and their meanings.

[Gi V · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating history of emoji. This book was a good pairing with Enough is Enuf (Gabe Henry) and is making me look forward to re-reading Because Internet (Gretchen McCulloch) that I read pre-GR in 2023.

[Emmilby · Rating 2 out of 5]

the pre emoji history was the coolest, the early Unicode after that was still interesting but less so, then I lost interest and dnf
I thought I used enough discord emoji to make it through a whole book. I was wrong.

[Linda]

See review here:
https://spectrumculture.com/2025/08/2...

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive history of emoji. But the print book for the best experience of the illustrations.

[River · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Because Internet* has a lot more information than this book

[Daniel Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well done. Engaging history of emoji and how they get used. Doesn’t overstay its welcome.

[Michelle Scott Roark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject and a light hearted tone.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly enjoyable, integrates insights from tech, politics, and global cultures

[aditi · Rating 4 out of 5]

definitely scratched the itch i have for an online history! good short read and super well-researched!