diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst
index 931d18dc349f3..3af0f1d553c0d 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst
@@ -448,6 +448,7 @@ Other Deprecations
 - Deprecated passing arguments as positional in :meth:`DataFrame.any` and :meth:`Series.any` (:issue:`44802`)
 - Deprecated the ``closed`` argument in :meth:`interval_range` in favor of ``inclusive`` argument; In a future version passing ``closed`` will raise (:issue:`40245`)
 - Deprecated the methods :meth:`DataFrame.mad`, :meth:`Series.mad`, and the corresponding groupby methods (:issue:`11787`)
+- Deprecated positional arguments to :meth:`Index.join` except for ``other``, use keyword-only arguments instead of positional arguments (:issue:`46518`)
 
 .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 .. _whatsnew_150.performance:
diff --git a/pandas/core/indexes/base.py b/pandas/core/indexes/base.py
index 80527474f2be6..59e55bdcb405a 100644
--- a/pandas/core/indexes/base.py
+++ b/pandas/core/indexes/base.py
@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@
     DtypeObj,
     F,
     IgnoreRaise,
+    Level,
     Shape,
     npt,
 )
@@ -4529,16 +4530,53 @@ def _reindex_non_unique(
     # --------------------------------------------------------------------
     # Join Methods
 
+    @overload
+    def join(
+        self,
+        other: Index,
+        *,
+        how: str_t = ...,
+        level: Level = ...,
+        return_indexers: Literal[True],
+        sort: bool = ...,
+    ) -> tuple[Index, npt.NDArray[np.intp] | None, npt.NDArray[np.intp] | None]:
+        ...
+
+    @overload
+    def join(
+        self,
+        other: Index,
+        *,
+        how: str_t = ...,
+        level: Level = ...,
+        return_indexers: Literal[False] = ...,
+        sort: bool = ...,
+    ) -> Index:
+        ...
+
+    @overload
+    def join(
+        self,
+        other: Index,
+        *,
+        how: str_t = ...,
+        level: Level = ...,
+        return_indexers: bool = ...,
+        sort: bool = ...,
+    ) -> Index | tuple[Index, npt.NDArray[np.intp] | None, npt.NDArray[np.intp] | None]:
+        ...
+
     @final
+    @deprecate_nonkeyword_arguments(version=None, allowed_args=["self", "other"])
     @_maybe_return_indexers
     def join(
         self,
-        other,
+        other: Index,
         how: str_t = "left",
-        level=None,
+        level: Level = None,
         return_indexers: bool = False,
         sort: bool = False,
-    ):
+    ) -> Index | tuple[Index, npt.NDArray[np.intp] | None, npt.NDArray[np.intp] | None]:
         """
         Compute join_index and indexers to conform data
         structures to the new index.
@@ -4723,7 +4761,7 @@ def _join_multi(self, other: Index, how: str_t):
             # Join left and right
             # Join on same leveled multi-index frames is supported
             join_idx, lidx, ridx = self_jnlevels.join(
-                other_jnlevels, how, return_indexers=True
+                other_jnlevels, how=how, return_indexers=True
             )
 
             # Restore the dropped levels
@@ -4731,8 +4769,16 @@ def _join_multi(self, other: Index, how: str_t):
             # common levels, ldrop_names, rdrop_names
             dropped_names = ldrop_names + rdrop_names
 
+            # error: Argument 5/6 to "restore_dropped_levels_multijoin" has
+            # incompatible type "Optional[ndarray[Any, dtype[signedinteger[Any
+            # ]]]]"; expected "ndarray[Any, dtype[signedinteger[Any]]]"
             levels, codes, names = restore_dropped_levels_multijoin(
-                self, other, dropped_names, join_idx, lidx, ridx
+                self,
+                other,
+                dropped_names,
+                join_idx,
+                lidx,  # type: ignore[arg-type]
+                ridx,  # type: ignore[arg-type]
             )
 
             # Re-create the multi-index