Matsuda attended Kyoto City College of Art graduating with her BFA in 1966 and her MFA in 1968. She had studied at college with foremost ceramist Tomimoto Kenkichi, then studied Kutani overglaze technique while still in college with Kitade Tojiro in Ishikawa Prefecture, going further to Tobe in Ehime prefecture to study underglaze blue. Though she doesn't consider herself as such, her work is often grouped with ceramists in the avant-garde. She exhibition first at the Nihon Tōgeiten in 1973, where she continued to show for the next decade. Though all of her subjects are recognizable, she chooses shapes that are out of the ordinary, including feet, women's buttocks, vases of Mount Fuji, watering cans, etc. She is active in Ashiya, Yamanashi Prefecture from which she can view Mount Fuji. Often anatomical subjects are covered with overglaze enameling patterns from Ming-dynasty China, and for utensils such as cups and saucers, she invents more geometric abstract motifs. Matsuda works with porcelain clay from either Arita or Seto, and either molds her forms or assembles them from segmented clay slabs. Matsuda's first exposure abroad was in 1983 for a Japan Foundation exhibition which showed in Washington D.C. and London, with later shows in Italy, France, Belgium, Egypt, New York, Brooklyn, Yale, Lawrence, Kansas, and Honolulu. Solo shows by Matsuda held between 1968 and 2015 include Gallery Nippon (Tokyo), Ikebukuro Seibu Gallery, Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi Gallery, Galerie Pousse (Tokyo), Masuda Studio (Tokyo), Kandori (Tokyo), Hankyu Gallery (Kobe, Umeda), Estudio Peironcely (Madrid,Spain), Gallery DAIICHI (New York, USA), NaNo-rium (Yamanashi-ken). Her selected group exhibitions include the following:
1983 Japanese National Ceramics Exhibition, juried shows ('73, '79, '81)
1986 Kazuo Yagi Award, Contemporary Ceramic Exhibition ('87, '88, '89)
1988 Asahi Contemporary Crafts Exhibition, invitational ('92, 2001)
1990 New Artist Award, Yamanashi Museum of Art
1991 Gold Medal Award, International Competition of Ceramic Art (juried show), Faenza, Italy
1992 International Invitational contemporary Exhibition of Ceramic Art, Merit Award, Taipei, Taiwan
1993 Contemporary Ceramic Works “UTSUWA,” Saitama Museum
1996 “New Expression in Porcelain: Developments in the 1990s,” The National Museum of Modern Art, Crafts Gallery, Tokyo
1996 “Contemporary Ceramic: Japanese Women,” Japan Information and Culture Center, Washington, DC, USA
1997 Fuji-Seoul (Horizontal and Vertical) “A Vision of Eight Crafts- Japanese and Korean Artists,” Seoul, Korea
1998 NHK "Calling on Ceramists” Studio Visits '98
2000 3&3 Barcelona-Japón,” Barcelona, Spain.
2001 World Ceramic Exposition 2001, Korea (juried show) Invitational Exhibition of Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2001, Korea
2002 “The Legacy of Modern Ceramic Art,” Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu
2003 "Mutsuo Yanagihara and Contemporary Radical Ceramicsts", The Museum of Art, Kōchi
2005-06 Contemporary Clay Japanese Ceramics for the New Century,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Japan Society in New York City)
2006 "Cool and Sophisticated: Contemporary Master Ceramists of Eastern Japan," Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum
2007-2012 Soaring Voices- Contemporary Japanese Women Ceramic Artists,” The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Muzee National de Ceramique, Sevres, France (traveling USA)
2009-2011 The 10th International Shoebox Sculpture Exhibition (a traveling exhibition organized by the University of Hawaii Art Gallery)
2011 Ceramica Viva 1 ceramisiti giapponesi premiati a Faenza, Istituto Italiano di Tokyo
2014 “What is pottery?” A Japan Ceramics Network joint exhibition
2016 Women artists in Yamanashi ( Yamanashi Prefecture Museum)
