The aim of this paper is to examine cues for prosodic characterization of attitudes in Japanese. This work is based on previous studies where 16 communicative social affects were defined. The audio signal parameters (fundamental frequency, amplitude and duration) of previously recorded Japanese attitudes, are statistically analyzed. Interesting interactions among the parameters, the gender and the expression of specific attitude (e.g. politeness) were found, and we report on which parameters most significantly characterize each attitude. Index Terms: speech, prosody, attitude, social affect, emotional speech, Japanese language