This thesis explores the concept of politeness in the Japanese language and culture based on the politeness theory developed by Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson. The aim of this study is to analyze the concept of politeness within Japanese culture, describe the strategies of politeness employed, identify what is crucial for their understanding, and provide an analysis of how they are dealt with in the process of translation based on a selected literary work. In the Japanese language, politeness is expressed in two unique ways, that is, through the grammatical categories of formality and hierarchical positioning, and they are traditionally seen as part of the Japanese system of honorific speech, keigo. Taking the use of keigo into consideration, Brown and Levinson classify Japanese culture as one of negative politeness, due to tendencies towards avoiding imposition on the interlocutor, maintaining emotional distance, as well as the strict hierarchical structure of society. However, this assertion is contested by numerous Japanese linguists, most notably Yoshiko Matsumoto and Sachiko Ide. Among the arguments they present, a significant one is that honorifics do not represent a form of negative politeness, nor even a volitional strategy, but rather a form of grammatical obligation that native speakers interpret in accordance with a complex set of socio-hierarchical rules relating to interpersonal relationships, described as the process of discernment or discernment politeness, wakimae. Other researchers have opposed their view in turn, arguing that these cultural specifics can be integrated and explained within the theory, and that the use of honorifics is not entirely automatic, but that there are conscious ways in which they are manipulated to express certain attitudes and emotional states. Besides wakimae, the use of honorifics is also influenced by the concept of the interdependent self and uchi-soto relationships. In an analysis of the novel "The Housekeeper and the Professor" in Japanese and Croatian, numerous examples of positive and negative politeness strategies and various forms of formal, respectful and humble verbs were found. However, these dynamics of formality and hierarchical positioning are somewhat more difficult to translate into Croatian. In this case, the translator has used the polite second-person pronoun Vi, localized forms of formulaic phrases, and in rarer cases, footnotes with cultural explanations. In conclusion, there are significant differences in the Japanese and Croatian perceptions of the concept of politeness, which must be carefully considered when learning, producing, and translating the Japanese language.