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By Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING, July 7 (Reuters) - China marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of war against Japan on Saturday with a U.S.-made film documenting Japanese wartime atrocities opening in theatres nationwide and schoolchildren holding a candlelight vigil.

But Chinese media played down commemorations, saying they were not aimed at fanning anti-Japanese sentiment.

"Taking history as a mirror is not to perpetuate hatred but to avoid the tragedy of history from repeating itself," a commentary in the People's Daily said.

"We must face up to history to realise peaceful co-existence, friendship lasting generations, mutual benefit and cooperation, and common development," the Communist Party mouthpiece said.

Police vans were parked outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, apparently to discourage any protest.

Chinese government leaders did not make any public statement.

A group of Beijing schoolchildren held a candlelight vigil to commemorate those killed in the Marco Polo Bridge incident in which Chinese and Japanese troops fired shots on July 7, 1937, sparking war.

"Nanking" is one of a number of movies about the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the rape of Nanking, released this year to mark the 70th anniversary of the fall of China's wartime capital to invading Japanese troops on Dec. 13, 1937.

Described as a Schindler's List-style movie about Westerners setting up a safe zone for refugees in the war-torn city, the film weaves grainy images of stacked bodies of infants with tearful accounts of rape and torture committed by Japanese soldiers from Chinese witnesses.

Hollywood actors give staged readings of diary entries kept by the Westerners in the safe zone, and retired Japanese soldiers confess to participating in mass killings.

China says Japanese troops slaughtered 300,000 civilians in Nanjing alone. An Allied tribunal after World War Two put the death toll at about 142,000. Some Japanese historians say the numbers are exaggerated, estimating as few as 20,000 soldiers and civilians were killed.

China's first museum dedicated to "comfort women" who were forced to serve as wartime sex slaves for Japanese troops opened to the public at Shanghai Normal University on Friday.

About 1,000 people attended a rally at a museum near the Marco Polo Bridge in suburban Beijing, followed by the opening of an exhibit. Items on display included a tombstone of Chang Tzu-chung, the most senior Chinese general killed in battle against invading Japanese forces.

The bridge was bedecked with wartime photos. A similar exhibit opened in the northeastern city of Shenyang.

Echoing the People's Daily commentary, an editorial in the English-language China Daily said remembering the past was not to "cultivate resentment among Chinese against Japanese" but to let younger generations and the rest of the world know the truth.

"We cherish our relationship with Japanese people and always believe that two neighbours ... need to develop and keep friendly relations through future generations," the editorial said.

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