Crab stick
form of kamaboko, a processed seafood made of finely pulverized white fish flesh (surimi)
Crab sticks, krab sticks, snow legs, imitation crab meat, or seafood sticks are a Japanese seafood product made of surimi (pulverized whitefish) and starch, shaped and cured to resemble the leg meat of snow crab or Japanese spider crab. It is a product that uses fish meat to imitate shellfish meat.
In Japanese, it is called kanikama (カニカマ), a portmanteau of kani ("crab") and kamaboko ("fish cake").
History
The Japanese company Sugiyo first produced and patented imitation crab flesh in 1974, as kanikama. This was a flake type. In 1975, the company Osaki Suisan first produced and patented imitation crab sticks.
In 1977, The Berelson Company of San Francisco, California, US, working with Sugiyo, introduced them internationally. Kanikama is still their common name in Japan, but internationally they are marketed under names including Krab Sticks, Ocean Sticks, Sea Legs and Imitation Crab Sticks. Legal restrictions now prevent them from being marketed as "Crab Sticks" in many places, as they usually do not have crab flesh.
Composition
Most crab sticks today are made from Alaska pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus) of the North Pacific Ocean.
The public source identifies “Crab stick” as form of kamaboko, a processed seafood made of finely pulverized white fish flesh (surimi). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Crab, stick and form.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1188911. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1975 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crab stick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.