[Typo3] MySQL 4.1.11 woes

[Jörg Schaller]

Scenario:

- Database imported from MySQL 4.0.x
- Import worked fine in MySQL 4.1.8
- Table character sets are set to latin1
- Collation set to latin1_ci_swedish
- Table uses languages ENGLISH, SPANISH and JAPANESE
- All characters have been stored in UTF-8 ever since MySQL 4.0.x

Provider had a problem with the MySQL server, he restored a daily
backup of the database (and probably upgraded to MySQL 4.1.11).
Result: all non-latin characters have been wrongly converted, i.e.
Japanese text is garbled. I've made a dump of the database and it
looks just my own backup I had generated a few days earlier, i.e., all
text is readable in UTF-8 inside the database.

I think they switched the default charset in 4.1.11 from latin1 to
utf-8 and introduced collation as default (dunno really what that
means), but I have no idea what I need to do to restore my db
correctly.

Things I have tried:

1. Replace the dump header
/*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;  
with
/*!40101 SET NAMES latin1 */;  
Result: Just another type of weird conversion

2. Replace in the dump all instances of 
ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
with
ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
Result: No change in characters, but db refuses to save changes in
those fields.

I am stumped. Are there any SQL/conversion specialists that could help
me with this one? I don't have access to MySQL config files on the
host server.

Thanks!
Jörg