In La Japonaise, Monet depicts his wife Camille in a heavily decorated red kimono and standing on tatami mat in front of a wall decorated by Japanese fans. Camille, whose hair was dark, wears a blonde wig to highlight her identity as a European woman

With her body in profile but her face turned towards the viewer, Camille’s posture mimics the movements from traditional Japanese dance. Her smile is in contrast with the stern samurai face painted in the lower half of the kimono. The many Japanese fans show a mixture of oriental and western motifs: the fan held by Camille displays the tricolor of the French flag, others showing Impressionist landscapes, a white crane, and Japanese geisha, etc

When he was working on this painting back in 1876, Monet wrote to Philippe Burty, an art critic and collector of Japanese artworks, commenting that it was "superb" to paint the heavily detailed kimono. But in 1918, upon being told that La Japonaise had been sold for a very good price, Monet was said to state that he was ashamed by having painted the work to please the market, calling it "a piece of filth"