diff --git a/spacy/lemmatizer.py b/spacy/lemmatizer.py
index 7f0a6fb7a..9c8f0e716 100644
--- a/spacy/lemmatizer.py
+++ b/spacy/lemmatizer.py
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ class Lemmatizer(object):
                     exc[pos] = read_exc(file_)
             else:
                 exc[pos] = {}
-        with (path / 'vocab' / 'lemma_rules.json').open() as file_:
+        with (path / 'vocab' / 'lemma_rules.json').open('rb') as file_:
             rules = json.load(file_)
         return cls(index, exc, rules)
 
diff --git a/spacy/matcher.pyx b/spacy/matcher.pyx
index c3e40c1a0..fbfa18c1e 100644
--- a/spacy/matcher.pyx
+++ b/spacy/matcher.pyx
@@ -175,7 +175,7 @@ cdef class Matcher:
     @classmethod
     def load(cls, path, vocab):
         if (path / 'gazetteer.json').exists():
-            with (path / 'gazetteer.json').open() as file_:
+            with (path / 'gazetteer.json').open('rb') as file_:
                 patterns = json.load(file_)
         else:
             patterns = {}