A magneto-optical recording medium having a substrate whereupon a transparent dielectric layer, a readout layer showing in-plane magnetization at room temperature and perpendicular magnetization with an increase in temperature, a metal film layer, a recording layer made of a perpendicularly magnetized film, and a protective layer are formed in this order, wherein the film thickness of the readout layer is between 5 nm and 30 nm, the film thickness of the metal film layer is between 6 nm and 40 nm, and the film thickness of the recording layer is between 20 nm and 80 nm. Since recording domain information at a portion showing in-plane magnetization is masked, even when adjacent recording bit enters into the beam diameter of a light beam focused, it is possible to separately reproduce individual recording bits with high signal quality.