Since 2023, the authors have been conducting open workshops on infants, toddlers and their parents at the Faculty of Child Studies at Tokyo Seitoku University. The workshops primarily involve expressive activities using percussion instruments, aiming to engage infants' and toddlers' multisensory perceptions. This study focuses on a workshop conducted in 2024 using long-bodied Japanese drums (wadaiko) to explore their appeal to infants and toddlers while proposing a new approach to their musical expression.In this workshop, which forms the subject of this research, the authors served as instructors, providing participants with experiences such as touching the wadaiko, imitating its rhythms, dancing to the original ‘Ton, pan, pon Ondo’ tune, and appreciating wadaiko performances. The activity did not focus on teaching traditional wadaiko performance techniques to infants and toddlers; instead, it emphasised allowing children to enjoy freely striking wadaiko and imitating rhythms in a self-directed manner. Activities using wadaiko proved highly engaging, with the children's interest in drums exceeding expectations. This suggests that wadaiko possesses characteristics that stimulate infants' and toddlers' multisensory perception and are instruments that lend appeal to expressive activities. To explore these phenomena, this study analysed observations and video recordings of the activities, along with post-activity questionnaires and interviews with parents, to clarify the impact of wadaiko on children and its significance. Analysis of the research data revealed that wadaiko possesses characteristics such as timbre, vibration, size, and texture that comprehensively engage multiple senses, making it an instrument that greatly stimulates infants’ and toddlers’ and readily encourages expressive activities. Furthermore, the instrument fostered a sense of aspiration for traditional Japanese instruments. This aspirational instrument promotes expressive power and creativity. Despite being a traditional Japanese instrument, wadaiko possesses the flexibility and versatility that enables infants and young children to express themselves freely.It became evident that expressive activities using wadaiko not only provided children with the joy of new musical expression and nurtured creativity but also shifted the enjoyment of musical expression from individual activity to collective engagement by sharing expressive activities with adults and new acquaintances. And this was confirmed to generate unique values from communication and group experiences in wadaiko. Furthermore, with several foreign infants participating in the workshop, the wadaiko, though rooted in traditional Japanese culture, demonstrated its potential as an educational resource for multicultural coexistence, enabling children of foreign nationalities to enjoy it together.