Emoji has nothing to do with the English word emotion.
Some emoji are specific to Japanese culture, such as a bowing businessman (U+1F647  ), the shoshinsha mark used to indicate a beginner driver (U+1F530  ), a white flower (U+1F4AE  ) used to denote "brilliant homework", or a group of emoji representing popular foods: ramen noodles (U+1F35C  ), dango (U+1F361  ), onigiri (U+1F359  ), curry (U+1F35B  ), and sushi (U+1F363  )
 They are much like emoticons, except emoji are pictures rather than typographic approximations; the term "emoji" in the strict sense refers to such pictures which can be represented as encoded characters, but it is sometimes applied to messaging stickers by extension

