Design AtlasThe characters read literally as "blue ocean waves." In Korean it's commonly called by the same hanja reading, cheonghaepa (청해파), or by the Japanese pronunciation "seigaiha." The earliest confirmed appearance isn't Japanese at all — it decorates Sassanid-era Persian silverware — and it reached Japan via the Silk Road, first showing up on a 6th-century haniwa clay figure's clothing before spreading through Heian-period court dress into kimono and ceramics broadly.
Structurally, a unit is a set of concentric semicircular arcs — a fan — and these units repeat across a row, but the next row shifts by exactly half a tile-width. That half-offset is what makes each row's fans peek out from behind the row above, producing the overlapping rhythm of waves rolling in.
In SVG, a single <pattern> tile carries two rows' worth of these 3–4-arc fans — one anchored at the tile's left edge, one shifted by half a tile toward the centre. Fans that get cut off at a tile boundary reassemble into their full shape against the neighbouring tile.
When to use
Use for Japanese-inspired branding, ceramic/packaging backgrounds, and wellness or bath-related UI. Keep the stroke at least 1.5px — thinner lines vanish when scaled down.