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Obviously, there are instances, but compare for example

"member of Congress" vs. "member of Diet"

The latter, according to Google Ngrams, is basically not used. Likewise, "session of Diet" is not used.

I have read the Stack Exchange answers on articles with government agencies, but I wonder if there is some reason that "Diet" in particular resists being used without an article.

Chris
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  • For comparison, notice that Germany’s legislature is always called the Bundestag in English, while Iceland’s legislative body is always either the Allthing or sometimes splicing in their own spelling but still with the English article, the Alþingi. – tchrist Jun 10 '19 at 04:15
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    I think instead of the thinking of the Diet of Japan as a special exception, maybe you should think Congress and Parliament as exceptions. As far as I know you're a member of the Senate, the Council, the Knesset (Israel), the Duma (Russia), the Rikstag (Sweden). – Zebrafish Jun 10 '19 at 04:25
  • Silly me, I thought the question was a culinary one. And you were asking if Congress or some other governmental institution had banned the definite article from the expression "Japan's diet". Still, TIL something new. :) – Mari-Lou A Jun 10 '19 at 04:39
  • The question would get an upvote from me if you could include a sample sentence where the article is missing and if you included the links to those questions you mentioned. As for Ngram, at a guess, instances where the expression "(a) member of diet" was used in books will be pretty rare compared to "a member of Congress/Parliament/Name of political party" – Mari-Lou A Jun 10 '19 at 04:46
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    According to the Encylopedia Brittanica and other sources the name Diet derives from 19th century German and, ultimately, from the medieval Latin "Dieta" ( for example The Diet of Worms in 1521, the name of which has caused amusement to adolescent students of history for years). The Diet has two Japanese names "Kokkai" {National Assembly} and "Teikoku Gikai {Imperial Assembly} so I doubt that the Japanese use the word Diet much, if at all. – BoldBen Jun 10 '19 at 08:56

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[Is there] any reason Japan's Diet is not used without a definite article... ?

Well, sure. As the answers here mention, people omit the direct article from locations when they're being conceived more as a state or condition (home, in jail, to church, at school). That reframing happens more when a place is in common reference but some cultural differences among dialects pop up: Americans are at home on their roads and talk more familiarly about college than university; Brits call their colleges unis and are overly familiar with their hospitals.

As some of the commenters above mentioned, a similar effect is apparent in discussing Congress and Parliament. Rather than continually refer to them as periodic common-noun gatherings of people requiring a direct article, they're often reframed in a way that enlivens and streamlines discussion. In this case, they're not really a state or condition; it's more that they're being treated as a proper-noun name. The Congress of Vienna, the United States Congress, (less often) the Congress of the United States, but of Congress, in Congress, &c. At least some of this is an effect of personifying the government.

'Diet' is latinate and unused by the legislatures of the major English-speaking countries, so it's going to trend formal. Even so, the Russian and Japanese diets are sometimes treated similarly, and of Diet and in Diet do appear. Pace @BoldBen, there are plenty of English-language materials on Japan these days and it looks like they simply refer to their 'members of Diet' as 'Diet members' and 'sessions of Diet' as 'Diet sessions'. Meanwhile, we have 'Congressmen' and occasional 'Congresswomen' but very few 'Congress members'. That probably has less to do with formality or familiarity than with the other meanings of 'member', 'congress', and 'diet'. 'Diet member' is very clear (assuming you live in a country with such a legislature), but 'Congress member' or 'Congress sessions' could lead to snickers and jokes even though people perfectly well knew what you meant.

lly
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