To read json data from file, optionally utf8-encoded, into a Perl data structure I do:

use strict;
use warnings;

# use this to enable script working with utf8 strings
use utf8;

# use this in order to print utf8 to console
binmode STDOUT, ":utf8"; 
binmode STDERR, ":utf8"; 

# contains json-encode/decode routines
use JSON;
# contains utf8 encode/decode routines
use Encode;

# where json data is:
my $jsonfile = 'data.json';

# open file with json
my $INP;
die "opening '$jsonfile'" unless open $INP, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', $json
+file;
# slurp file contents
my $contents;
{ local $/ = undef; $contents = Encode::encode 'UTF-8', <$INP> } close
+ $INP;
die "nothing to convert in '$jsonfile'..." unless $contents;
# convert json text to perl data structure
my $perldata = JSON::decode_json $contents;
die "JSON::decode_json() has failed" unless $perldata;

# dump the data for debugging
use Data::Dumper; # only needed if you want to dump a data structure
print Dumper($perldata);

# access element of data
print "image is ".$perldata->{'image'}."\n";
print "description (has unicode) is ".$perldata->{'description'}."\n";
print "meta/links/self is ".$perldata->{'meta'}->{'links'}->{'self'}."
+\n";
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bw, bliako