difficulty passing Japanese characters(UTF-8) via json_encode

Question

Having problems returning a list of Japanese terms from an MSSql database as JSON. If I return them as a bunch of list items all is ok, but I can not seem to get json encode to

Answer 1

\u611b\u77e5\u770c = 愛知県　(Aichi Prefecture)

\u611b\u5a9b\u770c = 愛媛県 (Ehime Prefecture)

Both are correct Japanese Prefecture name. So string conversion part has no problem.

The perp is hiding in the later phase.