A magnetic recording medium suppresses effectively side erasure even when recording dot intervals are reduced. Magnetic dots and a soft magnetic layer are provided on a soft magnetic underlayer with a nonmagnetic layer intervening, so that magnetic dots are separated by the soft magnetic layer, and consequently leakage flux during recording to magnetic dots is absorbed by the soft magnetic layer, side erasure can be suppressed, and moreover the soft magnetic underlayer and soft magnetic layer are separated, so that an influence on recording/reproduction characteristics can be prevented.