Matsuda was born on 9 May 1983 in Tokyo, to Yusaku Matsuda, a Japanese actor of partial Korean ancestry, and Miyuki Matsuda (née Kumagai), a Japanese Actress. He has two younger siblings, a younger brother, Shota Matsuda, and a younger sister by his parents' marriage and one older half-sister by his father's first marriage. His father died from bladder cancer in 1989, when Ryuhei was 6 years old. He attended Horikoshi High School, a Japanese high school that caters to Celebrity students, but did not graduate.