was fed to the castle under the moat that lay between it and what is now Kenrokuen by an artesian well, and the large lake in Kenrokuen, Kasumi-ga-Ike, acted as an emergency supply. Local legend has it that the lake in fact has a plug, which could be pulled to suddenly increase the water in the moats.
In the Meiji Period, castles were now the property of the central government, who considered them symbols of the outmoded feudal system and tore most of them down. In Kanazawa�s case the castle became the base for the Ninth Division of the Imperial Army. Those buildings which were in the way were torn down, and most of the rest perished in a fire in 1888. The Army occupied the castle until after World War II, when it was disbanded, and in 1949 the site became the new home of Kanazawa University, which stayed there until about 1998 when it moved to its new campus in the hills surrounding the city. Now the site is a park, and for the first time in its 400-year history is open to all who visit.
Merchant areas
After 1600, Kaga was now the richest domain outside the Shogunate itself. As a result, the population of Kanazawa increased dramatically. Samurai and other retainers, as well as commoners who migrated in, swelled the population manyfold. This resulted in the rather chaotic layout of the city that largely survives today. Though settlement was by no means willynilly, it did tend to be rather ad hoc at times. The maze-like street plan that resulted is usually ascribed to defensive purposes: however there is no documentary basis for this claim, and in fact most castle towns were laid out rather more rationally, and some, like Nagoya, were as grid-like as Manhattan. Defensive features in the castle town were, instead, primarily moats and gates: roads played a smaller role.
The series of moats was laid out in the early seventeenth century � initially they were dry, but later connected to the rivers. The Inner Moat was dug in only 27
