handling of multibyte char strings

GHC 5.02.[23] seems to be quite strict about literal strings in source code. I presume this is a feature. :-) However this is annoying for people who want to use wide chars in strings in source code. (Though I realise that doing so is not very "portable".) To illustrate, the following program main :: IO () main = let ja = 'Japanese character' in putChar ja >> putChar '\n' results in Compiling Main ( test-ja.hs, interpreted ) test-ja.hs:3: error in character literal Failed, modules loaded: none. with both ghc and ghci. Is anything allowed in literal strings except ascii? utf-8? Jens