unicodeText or raw text

[ron]

Greetings,

I am saving Japanese text as unicodetext to a file on a Mac but it 
seems to be saved as raw text. That is, when the file is doubleclicked 
and opens Textedit, it shows raw unicode, not Japanese. If Textedit's 
preferences are set to open text files as UTF16, then it opens the file 
and displays Japanese properly. If the file is opened in Textedit as 
plain text but then saved as UTF16 with no other changes, it displays 
Japanese properly on subsequent opens.

Is there a way to indicate that the textfile of unicoded text is indeed 
UTF16 so that it displays properly in text editors?

Thanks
Ron

ps I am aware of the options of rtftext and htmltext so you don't have 
to suggest those as alternative ways save the text. I need the plain 
text option as well.