diff --git a/mew.pl b/mew.pl
index 9cee2f6..a9a8ee4 100644
--- a/mew.pl
+++ b/mew.pl
@@ -8,11 +8,13 @@
 # Copyright (c) 2023 Thomas Hochstein <thh@thh.name>
 
 use utf8;
+use open qw(:std :encoding(UTF-8));
 use Encode;
 use MIME::QuotedPrint;
 use MIME::Base64;
 
 my $input = join (' ',@ARGV);
+utf8::decode($input);
 
 if ($input =~ /[\x80-\x{ffff}]/o) {
    print encode('MIME-Q', $input);