Person Bowing Emoji

A person kneeling and lowering their forehead toward the floor in a deep bow. This is dogeza (土下座), the most extreme bow in Japanese culture: used to express sincere apology, profound gratitude, or to ask an important favor of someone. The literal translation is 'ground-lower seat,' and the posture quite deliberately puts you in a vulnerable position at the other person's mercy.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name PERSON BOWING DEEPLY. Gender variants arrived with Emoji 4.0 (2016) as ZWJ sequences 🙇‍♂️ and 🙇‍♀️, and skin tone modifiers joined the same year.

The emoji is one of the most frequently misread characters in Unicode. Because the design shows a person flat against the ground, Western users have variously guessed push-ups, a massage, resting their head on a desk, or even sleeping. Mic's list of 'emojis you've been using wrong' put 🙇 near the top. The intended meaning is always a deep bow.

🙇 operates on two different volume dials depending on who's reading it.

In Japanese digital culture, 🙇 carries real weight. Dogeza in real life is reserved for genuinely serious occasions (formal apologies, politicians asking forgiveness, historic shaming). Online the gravity is softer, but Japanese users still reserve it for real gratitude or real apology. 'Thank you so much 🙇' after a favor or 'so sorry 🙇🙇🙇' after a mistake both read sincerely.

In Western use, the meaning drifts lighter. '🙇 thank you' is often just enthusiastic gratitude, the body-language cousin of 🙏 folded hands. '🙇 so sorry I'm late' is a semi-joking dramatic apology. Some users explicitly use 🙇 as a fake-serious 'I'm not worthy' gag ('🙇 master of the kitchen made me dinner'). The Japanese gravitas is usually lost.

It's also become part of fandom texting, especially anime and K-pop, where knowledge of dogeza is fluent and the emoji keeps its original weight. Outside those spaces, expect a portion of your audience to read 🙇 as 'push-ups,' 'desk nap,' or 'stretching.'

🙇 is almost never flirty, unless it's ironic. Dogeza is a low-to-the-ground submissive posture, which is the opposite of most flirty emoji energy. When it does appear in flirty contexts, it's self-deprecating humor: '🙇 I'll do better next time' after a teasing complaint. A solo 🙇 reads sincerely; a double-bow '🙇🙇' is usually joking.

• •After a real mistake = sincere apology, respond warmly
• •After a compliment = over-the-top 'I'm not worthy' joke
• •Paired with 💦 = extra contrite, often exaggerated
• •Stacked 3x or more = dramatic gag, not a real apology

🙇's design is a direct visual translation of dogeza (土下座), the deepest bow in the Japanese ojigi system. Japanese bowing has a graded ladder: eshaku (会釈, 15° nod for acquaintances), keirei (敬礼, 30° business bow), saikeirei (最敬礼, 45°+ formal bow), and at the bottom, dogeza, where you drop to your knees and lower your forehead to the ground.

Dogeza historically was a gesture of submission to a daimyo or other high-ranking figure. The vulnerable posture (neck exposed, body prostrate) literally put you at the other person's mercy, which is what made it such a serious act. Samurai-era scenes of dogeza bowing before a lord became a recurring image in kabuki, print, and eventually manga and anime.

By the late 1990s, dogeza was so embedded in Japanese pop culture that a manga about a teacher solving every problem with dogeza became a minor hit. The Japan Times ran a 'dogeza boom' piece in 2013 noting how the gesture had become meme-coded in Japanese TV, ads, and manga, often as comedic over-apology. When Unicode absorbed Japanese carrier emoji in 2010, 🙇 arrived carrying this whole history with it. In 2026, Japanese volleyball star Yuji Nishida performed a slide-across-the-floor dogeza after accidentally hitting a courtside staff member, which went viral globally.

1. 2010Approved in Unicode 6.0 as PERSON BOWING DEEPLY from the Japanese carrier emoji batch.
2. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0 when Unicode formalized the emoji keyboard standard.
3. 2016Emoji 4.0 added gendered variants 🙇‍♂️ and 🙇‍♀️, plus Fitzpatrick skin tone modifiers.
4. 2017Apple's iOS 10 redesign clarified the bowing posture; older iOS versions made the emoji look closer to push-ups.
5. 2021Google's Noto redesign elongated the prostrate posture and added more visible floor contact, making the dogeza reading more obvious.
6. 2026Japanese volleyball player Yuji Nishida's [viral court-slide dogeza](https://www.khaleejtimes.com/world/asia/japanese-volleyball-player-apology-viral-video) drove a spike in 🙇 usage on Japanese X during the SV League All-Star week.

Unlike most person-gesture emoji that defaulted to female, 🙇 shipped on almost every platform rendered as male. That's partly because the dramatic 'dogeza apology' trope in manga and anime is overwhelmingly performed by male characters, and partly because real-world dogeza gets associated with samurai-era submission and corporate-Japan public apologies, both male-coded images. The 🙇‍♀️ woman bowing variant sees lighter use. In actual Japanese life, dogeza is gender-neutral: women perform it too, in the same contexts, with the same weight.

• •The word dogeza (土下座) literally means 'ground-lower seat,' describing the kneeling posture where your forehead touches the floor.
• •Japan has four named levels of bow: eshaku (15°), keirei (30°), saikeirei (45°+), and dogeza (forehead to floor). 🙇 is the most extreme.
• •The Japan Times documented a 'dogeza boom' in 2013, with dogeza showing up constantly in TV dramas, ads, and manga as a comic or dramatic over-apology.
• •In 2026, Japanese volleyball player Yuji Nishida performed a viral slide-across-the-court dogeza after hitting a courtside worker with a serve, revisiting the real-world gesture on social media globally.
• •Historically, dogeza was a samurai-era gesture of submission, and the exposed-neck posture literally meant 'my life is in your hands' in front of someone carrying swords.
• •Apple's iOS emoji for 🙇 shipped for years with arms tucked so close to the body that users widely mistook it for push-ups. Apple eventually opened up the silhouette.
• •The Korean equivalent 큰절 (keunjeol) is performed at New Year's greetings to grandparents, weddings, and memorial rites, and 🙇 often stands in for it in Korean texting.
• •Unlike most person-gesture emoji, 🙇 defaulted to male on most platforms rather than female, likely because the dogeza-in-anime trope is predominantly a male character gesture.