According to one embodiment, a perpendicular magnetic recording medium has an arrangement obtained by sequentially stacking a nonmagnetic substrate, a soft magnetic underlayer, a nonmagnetic seed layer containing silver grains having an fcc structure and an amorphous germanium grain boundary formed between the silver grains, a reaction barrier layer containing 90 at % or more of silver or aluminum and having a thickness of 2 nm or less, a nonmagnetic interlayer formed on the reaction barrier layer and made of ruthenium or a ruthenium alloy, and a perpendicular magnetic recording layer.