Python 3.5 not handling unicode input from CLI argument

Question

I have a simple script that I'm attempting to use automate some of the japanese translation I do for my job.

 import requests
 import sys
 import json
 base_url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2?key=CANT_SHARE_THAT&source=ja&target=en&q='
 print(sys.argv[1])
 base_url += sys.argv[1]
 request = requests.get( base_url )
 if request.status_code != 200:
      print("Error on request")
 print( json.loads(request.text)['data']['translations'][0]['translatedText'])

When the first argument is a string like 初期設定クリア this script will explode at line

 print(sys.argv[1])

With the message:

 line 5, in encode
 return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]
 UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in 
 position 0-6: character maps to <undefined>

So the bug can be reduced too

 import sys
 print(sys.argv[1])

Which seems like an encoding problem. I'm using Python 3.5.1, and the terminal is MINGW64 under Windows7 x64.

When I write the same program in Rust1.8 (and the executable is ran under same conditions, i.e.: MINGW64 under Windows7 x64)

  use std::env;
  fn main() {
         let args: Vec<String> = env::args().skip(1).collect();
         print!("First arg: {}", &args[0] );
  }

It produces the proper output:

  $ rustc unicode_example.rs
  $ ./unicode_example.exe 初期設定クリア
  First arg: 初期設定クリア

So I'm trying to understand what is happening here. MINGW64 claims to have proper UTF-8 support, which it appears too. Does Python3.5.1 not have full UTF-8 support? I was under the assumption the move to Python3.X was because of Unicode support.

Answer 1

changing

 print(sys.argv[1])

to

 print(sys.argv[1].encode("utf-8"))

Will cause python to dump a string of bytes

 $ python google_translate.py 初期設定クリア
 b'\xe5\x88\x9d\xe6\x9c\x9f\xe8\xa8\xad\xe5\xae\x9a\xe3\x82\xaf\xe3\x83
 \xaa\xe3\x82\xa2'

Nonetheless it works. So the bug, if this is a bug... Is happening when python is decoding the internal string to print into the terminal, not when the argument is being encoded INTO a python string.

Also simply removing the print statement fixes the bug as well.