The main problem with U.S. airports is age. Most of the big U.S. airports are over 60 years old. They have generations of retrofitting and rebuilding layered over them and they are often surrounded by aging and substandard transportation infrastructure. For some of them, tactical nuclear weapons would be a good start to a proper overhaul.
Big Asian hubs tend to have fairly new airports, and they're nice. Secondary Asian airports are hit and miss; China still has provincial airports that make you miss Detroit or Philadelphia, though the Chinese will rebuild these as well in due course.
In an ideal world, we'd build new airports in the U.S. as well, but as a practical matter, airports are too big, too expensive, and too embedded in legacy transportation systems to be easily moved. Big U.S. cities are also surrounded by sprawling suburbs and a new airport would have to be located outside the suburban belt, which would make it highly inconvenient.
My first international flight actually was into Haneda in 1977. The airport was a mass of sprawl and concrete buildings. I was genuinely surprised to see they weren't growing rice or something between the runways.
Obviously, they did a lot of building and improvements to turn it into the world class airport which it is today. Land acquisition was fairly minimal. Today, it occupies roughly 20% more land area than it did in 1977, which includes the railroad stations needed to connect it to Tokyo's modern grid, high rise parking and bus terminals.
People actually go on tourist type excursions to some of the better airports in Japan just to enjoy fine dining and shopping or to send off a family member or company colleague.
The only reasons we can't do the same in the U.S.A. is (1)lack of will, (2)catering to the TSA/Security Theater mentality rather than to the comfort of the traveling public, (3)low priority.
I've heard, for instance, that LAX has undergone a major remodeling upgrade recently, which is probably why it is #72 on this list now rather than on the top 10 worst airport list as it used to be.