Segal presented recent research on an incident from twelfth-century Japan, in which “demon-like” people reportedly attacked a coastal community. His paper, titled “Invading Izu: Demons, Pirates, and Foreigners in Pre-modern Japan,” addresses topics
including pre-modern Japanese ideas about foreigners, folktale depictions of demons, trade with China and Southeast Asia, and more. Segal shared the paper as part of a panel that he organized on “Demons and the Demonic in Japan” for the 2016 Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Seattle.