With the release of Java 9, and the introduction of Project Jigsaw (the Java Platform Module System), we no longer have the need for a full-blown JRE to run our Java applications. It is now possible to construct a stripped-down Java Runtime, containing the minimum set of required modules. This allows us to create slim Docker containers without excess baggage.
The source code belonging to this blog post can be found at: https://github.com/rlippolis/java9-runtime-image