Possibly, but another angle is that the the designer of the Sopwith Camel (Herbert Smith) was one one of a group of British engineers shipped over the advise Mitsubishi in the 1920's, and trained the designer of the Zero.
I've always thought that the Zero was a bit like a monoplane Sopwith Camel, with the pilot, guns, engine etc. tightly clustered around the front of the aircraft and it's centre of gravity.