Ryukyu-Okinawan studies, or Ryukyuology (Okinawagaku/Ryukyugaku) is the study of Ryukyu-Okinawan history, culture, language, etc. Its roots can be traced back to the local scholar Iha Fuyu, known as the "Okinawagaku no chichi," or father of Okinawan studies. Iha's work came in response to the unnatural process of homogenization instituted by the Meiji Government throughout Japan, the effects of which were felt most acutely within Japan's recent territorial acquisitions. Ryukyu may have been close to Japan in myriad senses, but it had also undergone a very long period of independent evolution and development. Japan’s seizure of the island region was never for cultural reasons anyway, rather it constituted an early stage in a territorial expansion programme that was finally halted by the end of WWII. Missionaries and visitors to Ryukyu from the mid-19th century on were (as was the case in the development of Japanology and Sinology) also pivotal in the birth of Ryukyuology. Bettelheim and Chamberlain produced the first studies of the Ryukyuan language for an English-reading audience. Leavenworth's History of Loochoo was the earliest formal history effort in English. Once Japan opened to the world after the mid-19th century, and especially after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the number of scholars pursuing Japanology and Ryukyuology increased greatly.

Ryukyu-Okinawan studies (Ryukyuology) has since grown into a globally-acknowledged field with its own research institutes and academic conferences, although it has often found itself categorized and taught as an offshoot of Japanese studies (i.e., Japan from its peripheries) or part of Asian and/or East Asian studies. More scholars today, however, are pushing for the appreciation of Ryukyuan studies in and of themselves. University of Bonn Prof. Josef Kreiner is one prominent non-Okinawan scholar who has sought to relocate the history of Ryukyu more broadly in the context of world history. And in an abstract for a recent paper entitled The southwestern Islands in the theory-building of Japanese Ethnology,[1] Kreiner argues that “as important the role of Okinawan Studies has been, it was always directed towards the description of Japanese culture as a whole. Okinawa was not the main object of focus”.