I figured it out! You just don't understand the Japanese rule. The normal "pass" in Go when speaking English is not a pass. You are not passing the turn to your opponent. Read the Japanese rules. The action is abandoning your play to instead declare that you are ready to stop the game and proceed with Article 9. There is no ability to "pass" your turn over to your opponent as the term would commonly mean in other games. The Japanese rules do state that this is often referred to as a pass but they specifically state that the abandonment of your play is a declaration to begin Article 9. There is no ability to pass your turn to your opponent.
I can see where you are coming from, but this doesn't seem to square with logic or real life.
I haven't read much of the foregoing thread so may have missed a crucial point, but it seems to me that if you say Pass, that is shorthand for "I think the game is over", and that is what you also are saying. But that is not the same as saying "The game is over." The opponent has the right to ignore you and to make a move on the board. And this is precisely what has happened more than once in pro play (e.g. Game 5 of the 2008 Kisei, White passes on move 292, Black plays 293, play continues up to move 310). A 1998 game had five passes.
Black's right to make that move 293 in the Kisei game (i.e. the turn to play
is being passed to him) seems so blindingly obvious, and is implicit in your own words) that I struggle to understand what you are saying.
However, possible enlightenment came to me from the murky past. When I used to play, the common scenario at the end of the game (using always what we called Japanese rules) was that one player (call him White) would say Pass or something like, "I think it's over, OK?" But very often, Black might say, "No, I don't think so - it looks like you have play something over there" or "Are you sure? - I can still play here." Whereupon
White might say, "Oops, you're right" and play a move after all. In which case he has not passed on the turn to play. Or he might say, "No, I don't think I have to fill in - but go ahead and try something if you want." In which case he has specifically passed on the turn to play to Black.
Now I have no idea if this is still how western amateurs play (I suspect it is), but it is certainly not how the professionals play. If a pro says Pass, he is saying, "It's your move now."
And remember the Preamble to the rules (the one by rules committee chairman Yoshikuni Ichiro) stresses that they are designed to reflect the way Japanese go has traditionally been played, so it's the pro way that counts.
There are a few other observations I will make, not specific to you, but they may interest you and others.
1. Article 2's commentary 1 says "The making of moves in alternation is a right." That's it. It seems like a blunt, comes-out-of-nowhere statement. In fact, it reflects a huge debate in Japan going back to 1928 as to whether making a move was a right or an obligation. For a Japanese this comment 2.1 does not come out of nowhere - it has a huge context.
2. Article 2's other comment includes the statement "Relinquishing [the right - as per 2.1] to make a move (a pass) is a declaration by the person relinquishing his right that the game is over."
No problems there, but relinquishing = pass is not really transitive. Other texts contain, for example 休止（パス）, i.e. pass = pausing the game. A subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.
3. What is now called the confirmation phase has long had other names. One is 仮終局 (provisional end of the game), another is 停止 (cessation; used in the J89 rules), yet another the above 休止 (pause), and the most outlandish is Yasunaga Hajime's 第二の世界 (second world), which came from the habit of some researchers calling the actual game the primary world. (Fashions in metaphors do change.) Other pertinent phrases that were once in fashion were 本来の終局 and 窮局による終局. I mention these merely to illustrate that the rules field had been well and truly ploughed by Japanese rules mavens. They even discussed ideas like pass stones, though they called them 棄権賃. Yet still, the committee decided essentially to stick mostly with tradition.
4. 停止 (cessation) is the term used in current texts, and everyone here seems to take it to mean cessation of play, the game is over etc. Which is correct up to a point, Lord Cropper, but I have seen 停止 being used in older texts by rules researchers in the context of cessation of the right to play. Again a subtle difference but a difference, and one that would make the out-of-nowhere phrase "the making of moves in alternation is a right" have some relevance to the rest of the text.
I waiver my right to place a stone on the board. I think that I am ahead, so I do not want to humilate you by occupying a dame point or one point of my own territory. Probably my assessment was not correct, and you see some profitable place left for you. It's your turn again.
Thank you very much indeed, but I do not see any profitable place on the board left for me placing a stone. If that also was the reason for you waivering your right to place a stone on the board, I would like to suggest stopping the game.
Yes, indeed, it seems that we agree that there are only dame points left on the board, so let's stop the game and enter the next stage.
I think allowing perpetual cycles ends up requiring somewhat similar mental bookkeeping, because otherwise you don't even know if you have a cycle. At the same time, it complicates the decision about who wins the game, since it is no longer just "who has the largest score". Is a perpetual cycle automatically a draw? A "no-result"? A win for the player who is already ahead on the board? A win for the player who captures more stones during the cycle?