He earned a doctorate at Yale University under the tutelage of psychologist Edward Wheeler Scripture.

Matsumoto taught at the Tokyo Higher Normal School before he set up Japan's second psychology laboratory at Kyoto University.

[3] While Matsumoto was studying in Tokyo, American psychologist George Trumbull Ladd came to lecture in Japan.

[2] At Yale, Matsumoto studied under experimental psychologist Edward Wheeler Scripture, and he earned a Ph.D. in 1899.

[4] Matsumoto took a faculty position at the Tokyo Higher Normal School upon returning to Japan.

He taught psychocynematics, the quantitative study of such movements, to 125 students, including 20 doctoral graduates.