The Plainest Vestment, Kept Undyed on Purpose

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.