Joe

The joe is a Shinto priestly robe cut from undyed white silk or hemp, plainer than the colored kariginu and worn for purification rites and less formal observances rather than for major festivals. Like the kariginu it descends from Heian period court dress, but where the kariginu carries rank in its color, the joe deliberately carries none, and its whiteness marks the specific work of purification, harae, that a priest performs wearing it. A priest at a single shrine typically owns both garments and moves between them according to what the day's duties require, so the joe is not a lesser version of the kariginu so much as a different tool suited to a different kind of rite.

Nelson's ethnographic account of a working Shinto shrine over the course of a ritual year documents this everyday switching of vestments as routine shrine business, rarely commented on by the priests themselves precisely because the code is so thoroughly internalized that it does not need to be explained to be followed correctly. Because it carries no colour coding, the joe also travels well between shrines of different rank and lineage, worn in essentially the same form whether the shrine is a small local sanctuary or one of the larger institutions with a resident staff of several priests.

Unlike the kariginu, which is reserved to ordained priests, the joe is also worn by other shrine functionaries who assist at rites without holding full priestly ordination, which makes it one of the more widely worn garments in Shinto practice rather than a mark of rank as such. Its plainness suits this wider use: a garment that signals no specific grade can be worn by people who occupy no specific grade. The encyclopedic literature on Shinto practice groups the joe among the everyday working vestments of a shrine, as opposed to the small number of highly formal robes reserved for imperial rites or the grandest annual festivals, and notes that most of the visible ritual labor at an ordinary shrine, purification of worshippers, preparation of offerings, assistance at routine rites, is carried out in garments exactly like this one rather than in the more elaborate dress most visitors picture when they imagine Shinto vestment.

The garment's continuity from Heian secular wear to modern shrine service illustrates how much of Shinto material culture survives by adaptive reuse rather than by purpose built religious design. Its plain white cloth is laundered rather than replaced at the first sign of wear, since purification dress is valued for cleanliness rather than for novelty, unlike some of the more ornamented vestments reserved for major festivals.