I just got this as a comment on the old Blogsome version of this blog. Pretty interesting stuff:

The following is a fragment that has been removed from Wikipedia’s page, but it is worth thinking about and posting somewhere.

The Internet is rife with speculation as to the possible meaning of the title, with various theories including a pun on [[George Orwell]]’s [[Nineteen Eighty-Four]], a belief supported by the Murakami scholar Shojo Fujii, who claims that it is to be understood as “I am Q”, from [[Lu Xun]]’s novella [[The True Story of Ah Q]], to a claim that it has to do with the chromosomal location of [[acetylcholinesterase]] in humans and rat’s, on chromosome 1 (which is inaccurate; chromosomal locations are not designated quite this way.). This reference would suggest that the book has some reference to the [[Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway|Aum Shinrikyo gas attack]], which used [[sarin]] gas, which targets this critical enzyme.

However, the [[Protein Data Bank]] [[X-ray crystallography|protein crystal structure]] identifier for mouse acetylcholinesterase is labeled 1Q84, suggesting that this lattermost interpretation bears some credence. This is further supported by cover images[[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://virtualsushi.livejournal.com/]] Retrieved on May 20, 2009 which bear the dates 1985 (the year of the founding of the [[Aum Shinrikyo]] cult), 1994 (the year of the [[Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway|Aum Shinrikyo gas attack]]), 2002 (whose meaning is unclear, perhaps the date of a survey suggesting that the public still does not trust the [[Aum Shinrikyo|Aleph]] group, and 2009 (perhaps the date of publication?).

Some nice informed speculation there, but I think the bit about the dates is digging too deep. It’s not on the cover, but on the publisher’s site – here. If you click on the date, it takes you to a page promoting the novel Murakami published in that year. Shinchōsha is basically using the new novel to promote their old ones. Here is the page of my predictions for the novel.