Shizue Ukaji

is an Ainu activist, artist, and poet.

Early life Ukaji was born on March 13, 1933, in Urakawa, Hokkaido. She and her siblings grew up without much money, and would skip school and get part-time jobs to help support the family. When she was 20 years old, she moved to Sapporo to attend junior high school, even though she was much older than her classmates. She moved to Tokyo when she was 23, hoping that there would be less discrimination against Ainu there than in Hokkaido. She worked as a waitress, and furthered her education by listening to the college students who came by and reading what they were reading.

During the 1990s Ukaji began studying embroidery. In 1996, she went back to Hokkaido to study traditional Ainu designs and incorporate them in her work.

In 2006, Ukaji helped to produce a film called "Tokyo Ainu" about Ainu people living in Tokyo and the prejudice that they experience when they share their ethnic backgrounds.

Ukaji won the Eiji Yoshikawa Cultural Award in 2011.

Selected bibliography