Problem with tkFileDialog.askdirectory(), Windows, and non-ascii paths

[Read Roberts]

I have the current Windows binary install of Python 2.3.4 on my 
Windows XP system.

I am pained to discover that  tkFileDialog.askdirectory() returns  a 
mangled path when a directory is selected which has non-ascii Unicode 
path, as in Kanji characters, i.e. the usull "????" in place of the 
original UTF-8 code points.  .

After some time spent Google'ing. I don't find a discussion of this. 
Is there some option  or configuration change I can make to fix this? 
I can roll my own file-dialog , but I prefer to re-use code.