Because I could not believe it myself, I went and checked and it seems to be authentic. Link to a digital version of the book (the picture appears on page 30): https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100357933/1?ln=ja
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Historical Artifacts
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Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!
Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.
Generally speaking, ruins should go to !historyruins@lemmy.world
Illustrations of the past should go to !historyillustrations@lemmy.world
Photos of the past should go to !HistoryPorn@lemmy.world
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This is the earliest example of a cartoony open smiley mouth I've ever seen. It's pretty obvious it was make to look cute when this is what a hammerhead's mouth actually looks like:
His dick's out, of course he's happy. The drawing practically screams "I just had sex!".
https://www.livescience.com/59895-oldest-known-smiley-face-emoji.html
Not open but a cartoony smile. I feel like it might be anything though, some notation to indicate its contents or whatever else, but we don't know and probably won't ever know.
Also, some more here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley#Language_and_communication
None of those have that modern-feeling bean mouth look like the shark.
They look so happy, lmao
😁
Ponyo...?
Look like enemies you'd see in Banban.