A perpendicular magnetic recording medium includes a substrate and has a construction to stack consecutively on the substrate, a soft-magnetic backing layer, a seed layer, a magnetic flux slit layer, a non-magnetic intermediate layer, a recording layer, a protective layer, and a lubricating layer, wherein the magnetic flux slit layer 13 includes soft-magnetic particles of generally columnar structure having a boundary part of a non-magnetic part and constricts the magnetic flux from the recording head only to the part where the soft-magnetic particle is provided and suppresses thereby spreading of the magnetic flux. Further, a perpendicular magnetic recording medium carrying a magnetic flux slit layer over the recording layer is disposed.