The Night Mist of the Harbor draws on two same-sex murder cases—one from colonial Kaohsiung and one from today. Rather than retelling the crimes, it uses the sensational motifs of such reports as a framework, weaving in historical symbols that show Taiwan’s “two sides of one coin.” The title song, once banned after World War II, was kept alive when musicians wrote Taiwanese lyrics for a popular Japanese melody. These twin versions remain both familiar and estranged. Because official histories largely erase queer lives, lurid crime stories form rare records of same-sex desire. Through these layered echoes, The Night Mist of the Harbor reflects Taiwan’s culture—shaped by outside powers yet inseparable from them—embodying a self-as-other historical emblem.