Python 2.7: Save unicode string to file not using '\uXXXX' but using UTF-8.

json-utf8.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import json
from codecs import open

o = { 'text': u'木村' }

with open('foo.json', 'w', encoding= 'utf-8') as fp:
    json.dump(o, fp, ensure_ascii= False)

with open('foo.json', 'r', encoding= 'utf-8') as fp:
    print json.load(fp)['text'].encode('utf-8')