> The peculiar properties of CJK characters and the philosophy (apparently the Japanese did not like Unicode's tendencies towards Aristotelian essentialism) under which they were implemented in Unicode probably singlehandedly forced unicode to expand beyond the BMP....

Note that Han Unification has a history predating Unicode, and the Unicode work very much followed on from that.

The most notable is CCCII, developed in Taiwan in the early 80s, and then standardised in various places.

That's not to say that it hasn't been controversial (it has!), nor to say that it hasn't caused problems (it has!), but it's also unfair to say that it's just Unicode doing its own special thing.