Regarding the bar-branches, here is what I suspect it happened:
When the tree was younger, those branches were not bar-branches. They may have been about 1-1.5 inches apart. You can see a lot of Kukufu-ten winning, formal upright pines, where the branches are not bar, but still very close to each-other.
But as the tree got so big, the trunk and branches increased in size (may be tripled), so now the difference in level, between the opposing branches became hardly distinguishable. It could be that the previous generations were planning for a big tree, but not THIS big. When growing in the ground, it is much harder to control the increase in girth, of a tree. Eventually, these trees will lose their correct proportions, designed for being a bonsai.