The answer is: yes. For about two centuries until 1853, the only foreigners allowed to trade with Japan besides the Chinese were the Dutch. The word for "the Netherlands" in Japanese is oranda オランダ / 阿蘭陀 (from Portugese, Portugal was first European nation to trade with Japan). Although contact between the Dutch and the native population was very restricted, several scholars were very interested in (natural) science, and many books were eventually, painstakingly translated into Japanese. These knowledge and methods came to be known as rangaku 蘭学　(ran 蘭 from oranda and gaku 学 meaning study).

For your specific question I hope I'm allowed just a quote from Wikipedia that has the sources in them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangaku#Physical_sciences

[...] Shizuki Tadao [...] went on to translate the Dutch edition of Introductio ad Veram Physicam of the British author John Keil on the theories of Newton (Japanese title: Rekishō Shinsho (暦象新書, roughly: "New Text on Transitive Effects"), 1798). Shizuki coined several key scientific terms for the translation, which are still in use in modern Japanese; for example, "gravity" (重力 jūryoku), "attraction" (引力 inryoku), "centrifugal force" (遠心力 enshinryoku), and "center of mass" (集点 jūten).