The original 1999 emoji set contained 176 emoji. Shigetaka Kurita designed the set for NTT DOCOMO’s i-mode mobile internet service in Japan, where small pictograms helped users communicate within the strict limits of early mobile screens and text systems.
Kurita’s designs were created on a tiny 12×12-pixel grid. The set included weather symbols, signs, objects, and expressive faces, drawing inspiration from manga, Japanese visual symbols, road signs, and existing dingbat characters. Their simplicity was a technical necessity, but it also made them easy to recognize.
The number 176 refers specifically to Kurita’s well-known NTT DOCOMO collection released in 1999. It is sometimes described as the first emoji set, although earlier Japanese carriers, including SoftBank, had smaller pictographic sets. Modern Unicode emoji are vastly larger and support multiple skin tones, flags, professions, and platform-specific designs.