Kamasan is a UK hook brand rather than a factory: Kamatsu/Kamasan Ltd, an Oxfordshire company, was incorporated in 1983 and renamed in 1986. Drennan family members have sat on its board since at least 1991, and its hooks are sold as made in Japan. Beyond those company records, most dates rest on retailer copy or forum memory, and this page says which is which.

Origins: Drennan, Kamatsu and the 1986 rename

Peter Drennan founded Drennan International in 1967, first making balsa floats in his mother’s garage. The company grew into one of Britain’s best-known coarse-tackle suppliers, and Kamasan’s story runs through the same family.

Companies House shows Kamatsu Limited incorporated on 18 November 1983 and renamed Kamatsu/Kamasan Limited on 29 October 1986. The registry records the rename but not the reason for it. The company’s registered business is non-specialised wholesale trade, which fits a brand that imports and sells hooks rather than forging them.

Angling Times wrote in 2022 that Drennan launched Japanese needle-point hooks nearly 40 years earlier. That puts Drennan’s own Japanese hook line in the same early-1980s window as the Kamatsu company, though the article does not mention Kamatsu or Kamasan.