is there non-elglish language support in testrunner?

I am working on an internationalization project which requires me to assert on non-english(say japanese) strings coming as response. I am able to assert on the non english strings in the UI using the default/native mode of the soapUI.
i am trying to run the same from CLI using testrunner (with -E Default option),by providing the japanese strings as project level property , from a text file. But the assertion fails .
I believe the japanese strings are not being read from the text file ( while i am able to copy paste the same string in the UI and assert with the response string).

What is the way to achieve the same in CLI? Is there non-english language support in testrunner ?

Thanks
Abhishek