[["According to CNN, Shigetaka Kurita is widely credited with being the inventor of the emoji.  Among the first emojis he created, Kurita\u2019s favorite  is the heart. ", 67.0], ["The first emoji created was actually a set of emoji portraying things like clouds and sun and was created in Japan in 1999. ", 29.0], ["SoftBank, who partnered with Apple to bring the iPhone to Japan in 2008, released a phone with support for 90 distinct emoji characters in 1997.", 12.0], ["Not only was the 1997 SoftBank emoji set released earlier than the first known date of the Docomo emoji set (in \"1998 or 1999\"), one of the most iconic emoji characters now encoded as \ud83d\udca9 U+1F4A9 PILE OF POO in the Unicode Standard, originated in this release.", 9.0], ["The first emoji was created in 1999 by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita. ", 7.0], ["It goes so far back that no one knows.     The middle finger is the original emoji", 5.0], ["There wasn't just one, there was a set of 176 emoji created by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita. The original set includes icons for the weather, traffic, technology and time.", 5.0], ["SoftBank, known as J-Phone at the time, releases the SkyWalker DP-211SW mobile phone on the 1st of November 1997, with the world's first known emoji set. The set includes 90 distinct emoji characters, among them one of the most iconic emoji characters in the Unicode Standard, the poo emoji.", 3.0], ["The first emoji ever created was the smiling face with open mouth and smiling eyes emoji. ", 3.0], ["The smiley face", 2.0]]
what was the first emoji ever created
history