diff --git a/jnius/jnius_conversion.pxi b/jnius/jnius_conversion.pxi
index 7c26199..78e7931 100644
--- a/jnius/jnius_conversion.pxi
+++ b/jnius/jnius_conversion.pxi
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ cdef void populate_args(JNIEnv *j_env, tuple definition_args, jvalue *j_args, ar
             elif isinstance(py_arg, basestring) and \
                     argtype in ('Ljava/lang/String;', 'Ljava/lang/Object;'):
                 j_args[index].l = j_env[0].NewStringUTF(
-                        j_env, <char *><bytes>py_arg)
+                        j_env, <char *><bytes>py_arg.encode('utf-8'))
             elif isinstance(py_arg, JavaClass):
                 jc = py_arg
                 check_assignable_from(j_env, jc, argtype[1:-1])
diff --git a/tests/test_implementation.py b/tests/test_implementation.py
index 5fd7d32..9237ac4 100644
--- a/tests/test_implementation.py
+++ b/tests/test_implementation.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# coding: utf-8
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 import unittest
 from jnius.reflect import autoclass
 
@@ -18,4 +18,4 @@ class ImplementationTest(unittest.TestCase):
 
     def test_unicode(self):
         System = autoclass('java.lang.System')
-        System.out.printf('é'.encode('utf-8'))
+        System.out.printf(u'é')