title: How to convert only one axis when constructing a dataframe from a JSON string?
body: <p>The <a href="https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.read_json.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">read_json</a> function has an argument <code>convert_axes</code>.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that for my data the column labels MUST NOT be converted (i.e. keep them as strings), but the index MUST be converted.</p>
  
  <p>My dumb solution is to parse the string twice. Surely there is a better way?</p>
  
  <pre><code>json_str = '{"1": {"1970-01-02 00:00:00": "foo"}}'
  temp = pd.read_json(json_str, convert_axes=False)
  want = pd.read_json(json_str, convert_axes=True)
  want.columns = temp.columns
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>json_str</code> always comes in the format <code>{column -&gt; {index -&gt; value}}</code>, i.e. <code>orient='columns'</code>. The index does not have to be in datetime format, it could be an integer index, or something else.</p>