1 Also pronounced seikaiha. A wave design made of the arches of concentric circles superimposed upon one another so that only the upper portion of each set of circles is visible. It was used in China to depict the sea on ancient maps. In Japan it appears earliest on the clothing of a haniwa 埴輪 figure of a girl excavated in Gunma Prefecture. Beginning in the Heian period it was used on mo 裳, a form of shirt worn with the twelve-layers jūnihitoe 十二単 of kimono 着物. It appears on Seto ceramic ware *setoyaki 瀬戸焼 and lacquerware inkstone cases of the Kamakura period. In the Edo period Seikai Kanshichi 青海勘七 devised a way to paint the design in black lacquer using a brush; some authorities suggest this may have been the origin of the term seigaiha to describe this design.
2 A decorative pattern of repeated semicircular wave shapes used to decorate the built up ridges of temples, halls, and gates during the proto-modern period (latter 16th-19th century). It is one of the simplest patterns with broad, curved tiles placed in rows. The tiles of every other row straddle the meeting point of every two tiles below. The pattern has a wide variety of other uses:
1. A pattern drawn with a broom on sand in a garden *samon 砂文.
2. A pattern formed when wave-shaped tiles were plastered to outside walls during the 16th-19th century.
3. A pattern used in textile dying which first appeared on costumes for ancient court dance gagaku 雅楽.
4. A pattern used for mother-of-pearl inlay *raden 螺鈿, which became popular in the Genroku 元禄 era (1688-1703)
