diff --git a/django/contrib/sessions/backends/base.py b/django/contrib/sessions/backends/base.py
index c25f1babd4..2fb7991b49 100644
--- a/django/contrib/sessions/backends/base.py
+++ b/django/contrib/sessions/backends/base.py
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ class SessionBase(object):
         "Returns the given session dictionary pickled and encoded as a string."
         pickled = pickle.dumps(session_dict, pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)
         hash = self._hash(pickled)
-        return base64.b64encode(hash.encode() + b":" + pickled)
+        return base64.b64encode(hash.encode() + b":" + pickled).decode('ascii')
 
     def decode(self, session_data):
         encoded_data = base64.b64decode(smart_bytes(session_data))
diff --git a/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/tests.py b/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/tests.py
index 59f8f423dd..d80293b358 100644
--- a/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/tests.py
+++ b/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/tests.py
@@ -858,7 +858,7 @@ class UnicodePayloadTests(TestCase):
         json = '{"english": "mountain pass"}'
         response = self.client.post("/test_client_regress/parse_unicode_json/", json,
                                     content_type="application/json")
-        self.assertEqual(response.content, json)
+        self.assertEqual(response.content, json.encode())
 
     def test_unicode_payload_utf8(self):
         "A non-ASCII unicode data encoded as UTF-8 can be POSTed"
@@ -888,7 +888,7 @@ class DummyFile(object):
     def __init__(self, filename):
         self.name = filename
     def read(self):
-        return 'TEST_FILE_CONTENT'
+        return b'TEST_FILE_CONTENT'
 
 class UploadedFileEncodingTest(TestCase):
     def test_file_encoding(self):
diff --git a/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/views.py b/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/views.py
index 8792a97dc0..9b0654806b 100644
--- a/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/views.py
+++ b/tests/regressiontests/test_client_regress/views.py
@@ -80,9 +80,7 @@ def return_json_file(request):
 
     # This just checks that the uploaded data is JSON
     obj_dict = json.loads(request.body.decode(charset))
-    obj_json = json.dumps(obj_dict, encoding=charset,
-                                cls=DjangoJSONEncoder,
-                                ensure_ascii=False)
+    obj_json = json.dumps(obj_dict, cls=DjangoJSONEncoder, ensure_ascii=False)
     response = HttpResponse(obj_json.encode(charset), status=200,
                             content_type='application/json; charset=%s' % charset)
     response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=testfile.json'