In [2]: sf = shapefile.Reader('W05-09_01-g_Stream.shp', encoding='shift-jis')

In [3]: records = sf.records()
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
UnicodeDecodeError                        Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-3-1bffd1091f4e> in <module>()
----> 1 records = sf.records()

/home/akira/src/python/pyshp/shapefile.py in records(self)
    685         f.seek(self.__dbfHdrLength)
    686         for i in range(self.numRecords):
--> 687             r = self.__record()
    688             if r:
    689                 records.append(r)

/home/akira/src/python/pyshp/shapefile.py in __record(self)
    661             else:
    662                 # anything else is forced to string/unicode
--> 663                 value = u(value, self.encoding, self.encodingErrors)
    664                 value = value.strip()
    665             record.append(value)

/home/akira/src/python/pyshp/shapefile.py in u(v, encoding, encodingErrors)
     94         if isinstance(v, bytes):
     95             # For python 2 decode bytes to unicode.
---> 96             return v.decode(encoding, encodingErrors)
     97         elif isinstance(v, unicode):
     98             # Already unicode.

UnicodeDecodeError: 'shift_jis' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-1: illegal multibyte sequence